


this is gospel for insufferable bastards

by rarmaster



Series: YWKON [13]
Category: Tales of the Abyss, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Citan Uzuki: World's Biggest DICK, Escape, Friendship, Gen, OH AND MALIK'S HERE TOO, Trauma, Whether They Want to or Not, XC2 AU, also ft anna iriving myyah hawa hubert oswell and flynn scifo as minor characters, and then it's 26k, anyway come watch jade and mythra escape hell together and become friends along hte way, hubert's got more role than he has any right to LMAO, tfw you write an AU for your own AU, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24173908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: Mythra dies.Citan resonates with her.The Artificial Aegis Project ends a little differently.(Or: escaping an abusive relationship and also house arrest with a friend you literally never expected to have starring Jade Curtiss and Mythra Xenoblade, despite literally all odds.)
Relationships: Galea & Mythra, Jade Curtiss & Citan Uzuki (unwillingly), Jade Curtiss & Mythra
Series: YWKON [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1222385
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	this is gospel for insufferable bastards

**Author's Note:**

> context: I was rewriting the Artificial Aegis Project aka Installment 24 of _25 Lives_ and added Mythra for, you know. reasons. and about halfway through rewriting Installment 24 me and aera were like "ey lmao Citan driving Mythra tho" and then. and then I accidentally went and. wrote just one scene, becuase it was haunting me, and,
> 
> one, feverish month later,,
> 
> Anyway so this has minor spoilers for Installment 24 (not much you couldn't have inferred having happened on your own) before it goes wildly off the rails! hope you enjoy!!
> 
> you can find the rewrite [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709642/chapters/59724136) THE UH, FIRST HALF OF THIS, MAY BE CANON TO THE REWRITE NOW ACTUALLY LMAOOO,

“Well _maybe_ I’d be further along if you hadn’t _killed my daughter,_ ” Galea snaps. “If I could cross-reference Mythra herself instead of just my notes—”

“Alright,” Citan says.

Galea blinks.

“What?”

“I’ll go fish her out of the military pool for you.” And just when Galea is starting to feel something that might be hope under her surprise, Citan smiles, shooting it swiftly down: “Of course, I clearly can’t trust you to keep her in line, so I’ll drive her. Give me a few days to hunt her down.”

And then Citan’s gone.

“Well,” Galea says to the empty room, chest full of grief and horror and anger all at once. “ _Shit_.”

For the record: Jade hates this.

He’d been quite grateful, to be honest, that he was Citan’s only blade up until now. He wouldn’t dare wish his driver on another blade. He _certainly_ wouldn’t wish his driver on _Mythra._ And yet.

And yet.

Never mind the fact he killed her. Oh, yes, Jade is _absolutely_ looking forward to constantly stifling grief he doesn’t dare explain. In fact he was _quite excitedly_ anticipating having to face the blade he murdered on a day to day basis. Certainly. Not.

And of course since there is literally no reason for Jade to be here as Citan wakes Mythra up, Jade _is_ here. He’s here, part of these charades whether he wants to be or not. Such is his life.

“You want to wake her up now, or wait?” asks the bored clerk at the desk, having fetched and retrieved Mythra’s core crystal from rotation standby for Citan. She plops down in her desk chair, trying to play the role of eager employee but clearly just itching to get back to the book she stashed under her desk when they walked up earlier. Jade can’t blame her. “I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter— _you_ don’t need my help with blade basics, do you boss? Unlike the other rookies I get in here.”

She’s definitely asking them to go. Citan, predictably, ignores this.

“Well there’s no reason not to wake her now,” he says, turning Mythra’s core crystal over in his hands. The desk clerk suppresses a sigh. Jade suppresses one of his own. And then—

It’s interesting, Jade notes—for as much as he despises this, he _will_ take the opportunity to learn, cataloguing facts away for later—that he can _feel_ the ping Citan sends to Mythra’s dormant core crystal, because somewhere in the resonance link everything shifts, Jade’s own ether being asked to attune to Mythra’s. More interesting, Jade notes, is the _hesitance_ from Mythra’s end, for a split second. In fact, it’s longer than a second. It’s long enough that Jade fears that, perhaps, the resonance might not take at all.

But then the strained ether finally relaxes, snaps into place. Tension bleeds away. There’s a pull of green light.

And then there’s Mythra.

And the emotion bleed drowns in first confusion then horror then disgust then anger and then right back into a confusion that speaks more of fear. Mythra’s eyes dart between Citan and Jade, wary.

“What the…” she starts. “What are—” She seems to think better of the words halfway through. The fear gets tighter. “Where am I?”

“Hey, calm down, you’re alright,” the desk clerk says, her tone gentle if still a little bored. Like she’s done this a million times before. To Citan, she explains. “Sometimes this happens. Whatever she felt when she died stuck, even if the memories didn’t. Give her—”

“I know,” Citan interjects, bored, and fury lights in Jade’s chest like a whetstone dragged across a sword. Oh he knows, does he? How many times has Jade himself woken up, angry and despairing but unable to remember why he loathes his driver so much? How long did it take for that feeling to fade, before his notes eventually rekindled it?

Mythra makes eye contact with Jade, and Jade forgets his musings entirely. That anger is too sharp to be anything other than recognition. And though the clerk seems certain Mythra’s feelings won’t linger for long, as far as Jade can tell, all that’s actually happened is Mythra grabbed the emotion bleed and stifled them, rather than them fading or being forgotten.

…interesting.

And potentially very, _very_ bad.

Jade hopes the sudden hunch he has is wrong, but the evidence is almost damning.

“Anyway, Mythra,” Citan says, and Mythra doesn’t seem to be surprised he knows her name despite her not giving it. In fact, she doesn’t even appear to notice. “One of my employees requested you for a research project. I’ll need to go discuss the terms with her, so, Jade? Why don’t you…” He pauses, for a second, thinking things over. “I suppose I hadn’t considered where we were keeping her. Well, you can figure that out, can’t you?”

And then he leaves before Jade can even say yes of course or one of the three witty comments that stirred in the back of his throat.

Jade despises that man.

Ah, but he’ll have to keep that out of the emotion bleed even more than normal, won’t he? Citan’s probably gotten used to Jade hating him, but it wouldn’t do to sully his new companion’s opinion of their driver so early, would it?

…then again, he’ll have to tell her the dangers she’s in right now, won’t he? Her life is in Citan’s hands as much as Jade’s is. Except, he doubts _Mythra_ of all people could keep her mouth shut. Is it safe to tell her? Is it fair not to?

Mythra watches their driver go like a hawk, and once he’s out of sight, she rounds on Jade—then considers the desk clerk, and reconsiders. She looks pleadingly towards the door.

Hm.

( _If Jade’s hunch is right—dear, Architect, he hopes it isn’t_ — _then he will have to do more than simply tell Mythra the dangers, won’t he?_ )

“Well,” Jade says, because he is nothing if not a begrudging savior. “Let’s get going, then. Surely there’s some spare bedroom I can scrounge up for you. It wouldn’t do to force you into a supply closet, now would it?”

Predictably, Mythra groans, more venom in it than should be possible. “Oh fuck off, that’s still not funny,” she says, and then chokes the words down. _Hm._

Jade walks, not addressing it. The desk clerk has already reached for her book, so maybe she didn’t notice. Better that she doesn’t notice. If Jade’s hunch is right and anyone else finds out…

Once they are outside, Jade scans the area for potential eavesdroppers, but no one is in sight, and the ambient ether only sings of three bodies within earshot; himself, Mythra, and the clerk on the other side of the door. Door should muffle this enough, so—

“I need to talk to you, _alone_ ,” Mythra bites out in a rush, before Jade can even ask.

“Well,” he sighs. “That makes things easier.” He thinks it over, and determines the sooner the better, which means there’s only one place that he can really guarantee privacy; or at least some semblance of it. “Come on, then. Let’s get to a place we can talk.”

“Okay, first of all,” Mythra says, once Jade has the door closed and locked behind them. She guesses this must be his room, and wishes she could spend time taking it in, but. She can’t. Moving on, then: “I remember everything,” she opens with. And then: “Second of all, _what the fuck_.”

Pushing his glasses up to rub at his eyes, Jade collapses into the chair at his desk like he has never before been this weary in his life. So, that’s neat.

“I mean, I guess I get it,” Mythra continues, talking because she’s fucking nervous, talking because Jade’s quiet anger has sung in her veins since she woke up and it’s setting her on edge, talking because if she thinks about Citan’s end of the emotion bleed she’ll probably puke. “He wanted you to kill me so he could drive me, huh? I guess that tracks. And I guess. I guess if _he_ told you to kill me I’m not...”

She is still kind of mad, though, the memory of betrayal making her ether bubble, sick, in the back of her throat. Remembering with perfect clarity how much it _hurt_ when Jade’s spear cut her open is. Hm. Okay, maybe don’t think about that.

“Shit,” Jade says, quiet.

“Hm?” Mythra asks, confused and trying to push down the sickness she feels, because if she pukes on the emptiest stomach she’s ever had that’s just going to be more painful than useful.

“ _Shit,_ shit, _shit_ ,” Jade says again. He looks so tired. The emotion bleed sings with a perfect, clear horror. That scares Mythra. That scares Mythra a lot. If _Jade_ says it’s bad news…

“Jade…” Mythra says, quietly, taking a few steps towards him. She’s so uncomfortable right now, and she hates this a lot, hates that she probably is stuck with Citan driving her whether she wants to be or not and— _Architect,_ this emotion bleed is going to make her sick. She licks her lips. Crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself in part because she’s nervous and in part because it’s _fucking cold,_ now. Jade can freak out all he wants but does he really have to make the temperature drop so low while he does it?

“He’s going to kill you,” Jade whispers, and he sounds as exhausted as he does horrified. “He’s going to _shatter your core crystal_ if he finds out.”

“Citan?” Mythra asks, as if it could be anyone else. “Why…?”

Jade sighs. He drops his hand from his eyes and then he sits there, unmoving, scowling at the floor. It seems he is wrestling with a decision of some kind. Mythra shifts from foot to foot as she waits, antsy, as Jade spends an agonizing three minutes mulling whatever it is over. Finally he sighs.

“I suppose…” he says, slowly. “That I was going to tell you this even if you didn’t remember. But before I do—you have to promise me you can keep it secret. Can you do that, Mythra? Can you do that for me?”

“Uh, sure,” Mythra says.

Jade twists in his chair and bends to reach a book towards the bottom of the bookshelf. He sits with it in his lap, holding it tightly, as he looks up at Mythra, meets her gaze. She shivers, but holds it. The emotion bleed is full of dread and anxiety, and she’s honestly not sure who it belongs to, other than knowing it doesn’t belong to Citan.

“Let me be perfectly clear,” Jade continues, before he does anything with the book. “If you cannot keep this a secret, if _Citan finds out,_ he will kill us both, and then he’ll probably burn my things to get rid of all the evidence. Whether I want to or not, I am trusting my very life into your hands. _Can you keep a secret, Mythra_ ,” he repeats, and it is the hardest, barest question she has ever heard.

“I…” Mythra says, slowly. She’s not sure she trusts herself that much. That’s… really big stakes. But. If staying alive hinges on Citan not knowing she remembers… then she’ll have to do a lot of lying, anyway. What’s one more thing to hide?

For her friends, anything. Or at least, she’ll try her hardest.

“Yeah,” she tells Jade. “I’ll keep quiet.”

“Alright,” Jade says. He still hesitates as he cracks the book open and retrieves a piece of paper from its pages, hesitates before he hands it over to her.

She takes it, and she unfolds it, and…. Alright, literally what does she unpack first.

The dates, maybe. Nine years that Jade has been Citan’s blade, of which Jade only remembers less than half of. Nine years, and three tallies. The tallies being… deaths Jade has counted. Times Citan has killed him.

Times Citan has killed him because he said too much or acted out of line or because Citan simply found it more convenient for Jade to be without memories of certain events.

( _She thinks of Citan’s voice echoing over the arena, clear and cold, a demand that Poppi not hold back._

_She thinks of Citan, refusing to even check on Jade when he almost died._

_She wonders if Citan had hoped he would._

_She wonders if he was disappointed when Jade didn’t._

_She wonders how_ Jade _felt in the wake of all of that._ )

“Holy shit, Jade,” Mythra whispers, horror and fear and pity stirring in her all at once. If this has been what he’s shouldering, _on top of Citan’s general shitty attitude,_ then no fucking wonder he acts the way he does, all the time. No fucking _wonder_ he wasn’t jumping over himself to get them all out. If he tried and failed, that would be it for him. “I’m…”

Well now she feels like an ass for every time she’s been mean to him.

But also.

“ _What the fuck_ ,” she says, emphatically. She’s so furious that underneath all her fury she barely even notices Jade snatch his note back from her. “What the _fuck,_ that fucking bastard he’s been doing this to you for _how long_? That’s _fucked up_.”

Literally how could a driver do that to a blade? Yes, yes, okay, Galea was a special case, but Mythra can’t imagine Galea being _that_ special of a case! What fucking driver goes around repeatedly killing their blade to wipe their blades memories _what the hell that’s fucked up._

Jade sighs, short, exasperation beating against all of Mythra’s fury. He snaps his book shut, note returned between its pages.

“Yes, thanks for enlightening me, it’s not like I wasn’t aware or anything,” he says, and it’s sarcastic as hell, but—

“ _You could have said something_!?” Mythra demands, gaping at him. “Literally you could have said something and—”

“Then what?” Jade interjects, sharp. “What could any of you have done for me? There is no way out of this that doesn’t involve me losing my memory and that is the _last_ thing I want to do. I’ve fought too hard to keep these past four years. I’m not throwing them away even for my freedom.”

“That’s…” Mythra begins, but he has every right to keep what has been constantly robbed from him for longer than he can reasonably count. And then the rest of it hits her. “Oh, shit, Citan’s gonna kill me.”

“If he finds out, undoubtedly,” Jade answers.

“Oh, fuck,” Mythra says.

She’s not dumb. She can do the math. If Citan keeps resetting Jade because he thinks Jade remembering certain things is inconvenient, then Citan’s going to fucking _hate_ that she remembers _everything._ Being killed. Poppi dying. The fact that her dr—her mother. Her _mother_ and the _rest of her family_ are all locked up. She remembers, and she can’t think of anything else that Citan would find _more_ inconvenient.

She’s going to fucking die. He’s going to gut her and then shatter her core crystal.

She wonders

She wonders how exactly Jade has managed to live four years carrying this grim certainty in his chest for every waking second.

“How… the fuck do you live like this,” Mythra asks, almost whining.

“By the skin of my teeth,” Jade replies, with what sounds like pride but feels like brittle irritation. He bends to return his book back to its shelf.

In lieu of a better place to sit, with the only other chair being on the other side of the room and all, Mythra just plops into a heap on the floor. She hugs her knees to her chest, clutching her legs so hard her skin _hurts_ from where her fingers dig into it. She misses Galea. She misses not having a cloud of dread hanging over her head. She’s in the middle of a fucking storm and the only anchor she has is Jade’s constant anger and exhaustion, and Citan’s—

Nothing.

Citan’s fucking nothing.

“Architect, is it _always_ like that?” Mythra asks, despairing because she’s pretty sure blades aren’t meant to live with constant none input from their drivers. Jade makes an inquisitive sound at her, and she realizes that despite sharing an emotion bleed he it’s not like he can _read her thoughts,_ so. “The emotion bleed, I mean,” she elaborates. “Citan’s just. Ugh.” She doesn’t even have words to describe it. It’s like a wall of apathy. “That’s _unnatural._ ”

“Is it?” Jade asks, eyebrows raised. “I can’t say I remember it feeling any different. Not often, anyway.”

_Yeah okay that’s fucked up._

There’s no point telling Jade it’s fucked up, though, because he must know, so Mythra just buries her face in her knees and groans as loud as she feels comfortable, right now.

“Did it feel different, when Galea was driving you?” Jade asks. “It occurs to me you’re the first blade—other than, say, the Aegises—who could even compare resonances between two separate drivers. Needless to say, I’m interested.”

Mythra scoffs, without any real bite in her laugh. “Yeah, it’s like night and day,” she answers. “Even if I wasn’t getting anything strong from Galea, it was at least… _nice._ Or, _comfortable._ This is like…”

It’s not stifling, exactly. It isn’t choking her. It’s just more like whatever she does, whatever she feels, straight up _doesn’t matter._ Is Citan’s own apathy bleeding into her? Tainting her ability to… well, do literally anything? Care about it properly? No wonder Jade’s a fucking nightmare!

“We need out of here,” Mythra says, instead of whatever the hell else she’d been saying before. She looks up to Jade, desperate, knowing he has to understand. “We need _out_.”

The look Jade gives her is not impassive, exactly, but it’s definitely unmoved by the strength and sharpness of her frantic despair. He looks down his nose at her, legs and arms both crossed.

“I can get you out,” he says, simply. Almost an ultimatum. “Kill you, slide your core crystal to Galea for her to hide until it’s safer, tell Citan I shattered you the moment I discovered you remembered. He might buy it.”

He might not, Jade doesn’t say. Mythra has honestly no way of making a call on that. Jade knows Citan better than she does.

It doesn’t matter, though.

“You need out, too,” she insists.

“I’m not going anywhere unless I can keep my memories,” Jade says, and there’s his ultimatum.

“They patched me, that’s probably why I kept mine,” Mythra argues. “We can patch you, too.”

“And who’s to say it will work?”

“It worked on me!”

“You’re artificial and also only one blade. Not exactly great control conditions.”

Mythra hisses. She wants more than anything for him to take her up on this, to listen, to even _think_ of running away with her. How much of this is him? How much of this is _Citan’s fucking apathy?_

“Besides,” Jade continues, his tone sharp. “Even if we were to kill Citan, that would only get us out of this hellhole of a resonance. It wouldn’t get us out of _here._ It wouldn’t get your _family_ out of their prison. We’d both just end back up in military rotation, useless to everyone else.”

“Then we break them out!” Mythra argues. It’s not fucking hard. “The two of us against everyone else—we could make a run for it! You’re the _strongest blade_ on this base!”

“Be that as it may, I am still no match for an _entire army,_ which Citan will certainly send after us.”

“Then we kill him once we’re out!”

Jade puts his face in his hand like he cannot believe Mythra is being this stupid. She growls a little at the implication—she’s _not_ being stupid. It’s clear from Jade’s tone he thinks so as he says: “That does not stop anyone else here from sending an army after us. And that would also _kill us,_ as well, leaving your family defenseless in the middle of nowhere. How would you have us avoid that? Shall we take Citan with us?”

“Well,” Mythra says, but admits that she hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“We will need time to plan,” Jade says, and _thank fuck,_ at least he’s thinking about it.

“Okay, we can do that.”

“I can do that,” Jade corrects, sharp. “ _You,_ I think, would probably be better off dead and in Galea’s hands while I work things out.”

“Hey—what the _fuck_!? I said I’d keep your secret! I can—”

“Can you keep up the charade that you don’t remember anything for weeks? For _months_ , Mythra?” Jade counters. “If Citan finds out, he will shatter you on the spot. I can handle this alone. And I promise: I will get you and your family out.”

“No,” Mythra insists. He hasn’t pulled out his spear to kill her yet, and Foresight doesn’t ping her like he’s going to try anytime soon, which is good. Means she has time to convince him not to. ( _She’ll have to convince him. He killed her once, he’s surely capable of doing it again._ ) “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t care! I can’t let you suffer this alone, not anymore. And if- If I’m here, then I can help. I can get them _out._ It’s not—it’s not fair for you to fucking _kill_ me again, you asshole! I don’t want to sit on the sidelines.”

Jade stares at her for a long, long moment. He’s weighing her. Judging her. Mythra keeps her head held high.

“Both of our lives are on the line here,” he says, cold. “All of my hard work, all of my memories. If you make one wrong move, we’re both dead. Why should I trust you with that?”

“Because I’m your _friend_. Don’t just write me off without giving me a chance to prove myself. Citan needs to never find out I remember? Fine! I’ll lie! I’ll get _damn good at it,_ too! But if you kill me again, I’ll never forgive you—”

Jade shrugs. “I can live with that.”

Mythra is going to wring his neck, she thinks.

“ _Jade,_ ” she hisses. “Just let me _try._ ”

Jade sighs.

“Fine,” he says. “But if we’re going to pull this off, we’ll have to get started now. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

Mythra’s core _soars._ Annoyance gives way to delight, enough that she feels comfortable to smirk, to tease: “What, _Citan Wrangling 101?_ ” she asks.

Jade massages the bridge of his nose. “If you really must call it that.”

For his act, the emotion bleed sings fond. Fond, and… cautiously hopeful, Mythra thinks. She wonders if that’s the first hope Jade has felt in years.

Mythra might just survive this, Jade thinks. And not necessarily because she is great at lying—because she isn’t, really, though she’s trying her best—but because in Jade’s opinion, he’s come up with the best possible cover story.

Citan doesn’t know shit about artificial blades. _No one_ knows shit about artificial blades. So Jade’s lie is simple, and he thinks, prone to cover all the bases.

“A word, sir, about Mythra,” he says to Citan, letting himself into Citan’s office. Citan looks up from… whatever the hell he was doing, certainly not _work,_ seeing as he pawns all of that off on Jade. Citan leans back in his desk chair, elbows on the arms and hands folded together, eyebrows raised at Jade. He looks insufferably smug; his default.

“Is there an issue?” Citan asks. He doesn’t seem wary. He almost seems intrigued. But then, he’s very good at pretending he’s interested in things he couldn’t give less of a shit about.

“Not necessarily,” Jade hedges. He closes the door behind him, then folds his hands behind his back. Gripping his own wrists always serves as a nice anchor. “But you know how flawed artificial blades are.” It kills him to say it, really, but he knows the words Citan _wants_ to hear. “It seems she remembers… a few things…”

Citan’s eyebrows raise a little higher, amusement turning sharp, dangerous. Jade kills the fear in his core.

“Not very well,” he continues, before Citan can ask anything incriminating. “I’d say she remembers it about as well as humans remember their very early childhood. Vague memories of working with Galea before—not that she remembered Galea’s name—and little else.”

“Not dying?” Citan asks.

Jade shakes his head.

“Poppi?”

Again, Jade shakes his head.

“For a moment, she seemed to, but she forgot again the moment I inquired further,” Jade elaborates, because the lie hinges on this, specifically. _Play it like Anna and her déjà vu,_ Jade had advised Mythra. If they pretended she could remember for only a moment, but forgot after, Mythra wouldn’t have to lie as much as she would simply have to play dumb every time she slipped up. “She can’t even seem to hold memories of Galea in her mind for long before they slip away from her.”

Citan hums. “That’s interesting. But not something we can’t work around, I think.” That’s the thing, about Citan. He thinks fast. Already he’s weighed the issue, made his decision, worked out the best plan of attack. “If we keep her interactions with Galea and the rest to a minimum, perhaps supervised… And I suppose if she really becomes troublesome, we can just get rid of her.”

It is only immense self-control on Jade’s part that keeps Citan alive, right then.

“Of course, sir,” Jade bites out through clenched teeth.

Citan waves him off, looking unbothered. “Well, tell Mythra to meet me in the lab in, I don’t know, an hour or so?” He looks idly at the clock, but Jade knows that it doesn’t matter. Citan will be late, regardless of what time he sets. He is only ever late. “Actually, you should probably stick with her. The less time she spends unsupervised, the better. And if she ever seems to remember more than just a few vague things…”

Jade smiles, bright and false. “Understood.”

( _If it comes to that, he will see Mythra safely back to her mother, even if he has to shatter another blade and present those shards to Citan as proof._ )

Mythra’s not good at lying.

Galea’s always known this.

The most Mythra has ever managed is a poker face while jointly invested in teasing Klaus until he gets mad, and that only barely. She deflects alright when it comes to secrets and pointed questions, but outright lying? Keeping up an act for more than a minute? She could never.

And for that reason Galea’s almost positive Mythra remembers her.

Mythra doesn’t say so, of course, not outright. But she keeps sending longing looks at Galea as Galea takes readings and makes notes. It’s all Galea can think about as she notes down ether levels and resonance frequencies. The way Mythra looks at her without looking at her, the way Mythra doesn’t talk to her. The way Mythra spends every moment she’s _not_ looking at Galea looking instead at Citan with her mouth working like she wants to say something but is pretty sure she can’t.

It makes Galea furious.

Citan isn’t even doing anything but _sitting_ there in the corner, watching like he’s bored, offering no commentary or help and while Galea’s glad he’s silent his presence still causes the hair on the back of her neck to stand up. This is the tensest silence Galea has ever worked in.

She wants to say something to Mythra. She isn’t sure what to say, especially not with Citan sitting right there. So she does her work and she doesn’t say anything at all.

When the hour is up, Citan gets to his feet, says something Galea doesn’t listen to, and Mythra hops off the table she was sitting on.

“It was nice seeing you, Mythra,” Galea says, because she can’t not say _anything._

Mythra doesn’t look at her. “Yeah, sure,” she says, voice tight.

And then she leaves the room after her driver.

Someone throws the door to Jade’s room open. He spins around, startled by the suddenness and the force with which his door hits the wall. He is subsequently unamused to see Mythra. At least she is hastily closing the door behind her.

“Mythra, honestly, I asked you to knock first—”

“Galea knows,” Mythra says, and Jade’s suddenly glad she at least thought to close the door before continuing.

“Galea knows?” he repeats. “Knows what?”

“That I remember, I think.”

Alarm flares in Jade’s core, properly sings against the feedback of tight panic that Mythra is sending him.

“What did you tell her?” he asks. “What did you say?”

“Nothing!!” Mythra all-but wails, pacing furiously back and forth across Jade’s floor. “I said nothing to her but she still—I’m pretty sure she figured it out! I’m. Bad at lying to her, you know? That’s why I tried not to say anything but— _ugh!_ That’s besides the point! You have to go over there and tell her the truth and not to tell anyone else! She can keep a secret but _only if she knows she has to keep it secret._ ”

Jade… does not like having to share this many cards of his deck, truthfully.

But he knows how much the scientist crew is prone to gossip. He doesn’t doubt a single word Mythra has said. And Mythra’s right, that time is of the essence. How long before Galea gossips to the rest of them? If they are even the slightest suspicious…

“Fine,” Jade says, getting to his feet.

“Tell her I’m sorry, too, please Jade—”

But Jade is already out the door.

There are greetings and other comments that frankly Jade doesn’t even listen to as he lets himself into the labs, and he wishes he could have more time to indulge in their friendship, tick off whether or not they’re mad at him, but the conversation with Galea is somewhat dire and incredibly urgent. Maybe after, he can talk to Klaus for a little bit. Check in on Anna. Ask how Myyah’s doing. But first:

“Galea, a word, please,” Jade says.

Galea looks up from her desk—transcribing notes, or inputting data, Jade doesn’t know, Jade barely cares—eyebrows raised. Distrustful. Still upset, probably. That’s fine. Jade would be upset too, if he were her. He might even be a little jealous.

“Sure,” Galea says, but doesn’t make to get up.

Jade sighs. “Privately.”

Galea sends a look around the room, like _is the fact no one else is loitering by my desk not private enough?_ but Jade doesn’t budge, so finally Galea rolls her eyes and gets to her feet. Even the snap of her chair sliding away from her desk is angry.

They end up in Galea’s room, which will have to do. Jade doesn’t spend any time to catalogue Galea’s belongings in detail, nor does he precisely have the energy for it. She has a bed. A bookshelf. Things that look like they could have belonged to Mythra shoved into a pile on the floor. The bed sits in almost the center of the room, headboard only up against the wall, and it’s near the bed that Galea stops, arms crossed, to glare up at Jade.

“Well?” she asks, impatient.

“First,” Jade says, unbothered by either her proximity or her glare. “You need to promise me you can keep a secret.”

“Or else what?”

Jade could bite about how friends are supposed to keep secrets, no questions asked, but he refrains. It’s important Galea actually understand the stakes here, after all.

“Or else Mythra and myself both die.”

Galea squints at him, suspicious.

“Can you keep a secret, Galea,” Jade repeats.

Galea keeps scowling, but she nods, slowly. “Yeah, why?”

“Did you speak to the others about Mythra?”

Galea’s deepening scowl makes Jade wonder if she’s appreciating all these questions before she gets an answer. He can’t blame her. He throws her a bone, though.

“Rest assured, I will explain myself in due time. But I’d rather only have to explain things once. Did you tell them about Mythra or not?”

“…No,” Galea answers, and she finally lowers her gaze—or at least the intensity of it. “Wasn’t much to say about her. …is there something they _should_ know about her?”

Jade takes a deep breath. He still does not like having to share this information, but lack of communication will get them killed. “No,” Jade says. “The less who have to keep this secret, the better. But Mythra seems sure you’ve figured it out already—”

“Does she, now?”

“—and the last thing we need is you or, say, _Anna,_ running your mouth where it could reach Citan’s ears. So. Yes, Mythra remembers everything. For her sake, it’s better if Citan never finds out.”

Galea’s surprise slowly turns sour. “Or, what, you’ll kill her again?” she asks, harsh.

Jade sighs.

“If Citan doesn’t shatter her the moment he finds out, yes,” he answers, and it’s the truth. “Because if _I_ kill her, I can simply smuggle her core crystal back to you.”

Galea’s anger doesn’t evaporate, exactly, but much like before—last time they spoke about Mythra, about Jade killing Mythra—her wind goes out of her sails about here. Galea is a smart woman, it seems. She knows how to take all of her anger and reign it back in when it matters; it’s a wonder Mythra didn’t learn that from her. Galea breathes, long and deep, still scowling, but with much less energy.

“Citan’d… really shatter her, you think?” she asks, cautious. “Just because she remembers?”

Jade laughs, sharp and bitter, before he can help himself. “Believe me, he hates little more than blades remembering things he deems _inconvenient_ for them to know—ah.” He regrets the words the moment they’re out of his mouth ( _that’s too much, too many more cards than he wanted to show_ ), but though Galea’s expression has shifted from exhausted fury to startled concern, she doesn’t comment.

“…what’s the plan, then?” Galea asks, instead. “Do you have a plan?”

“I’m working on it.”

“But I’m assuming you don’t intend on staying here.”

Jade adjusts his glasses, sighing rather than looking at Galea. “No,” he admits. “But.” He isn’t sure what makes him do it. Maybe it’s how much Mythra trusts Galea, humming inside of him despite Mythra not even being here. Maybe it’s just because it’s more than his own life on the line, here. They’ve bought Mythra time, with their cover story, but she’s not bound to last more than a year, and a year is a generous estimate. Maybe then it is the urgency that makes him speak. “Leaving with Citan still in the picture is impossible at best, and yet I’m not keen to kill myself to buy you freedom.”

“It’d be your freedom, too,” Galea begins.

Jade despises that they’re talking about this.

“And if it’s memories you’re worried about—”

“You’ll have to forgive me, but that patch of yours working on Mythra, who is artificial, isn’t quite enough results for me to feel comfortable throwing my life and memories away on a gamble.” Never mind that Citan would shatter _him_ if he found out Jade was attempting to keep his memories. Jade adjusts his glasses one last time, then lets his hand fall from his face. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should really get back before Mythra has to spend any longer alone with Citan.”

That disarms Galea enough Jade can make his way to the door without her saying anything else, but unfortunately—though he’d like to simply _leave_ here—he thinks of one more thing to say.

“Secrecy is key, remember.”

“Got it,” Galea says. She smiles at Jade; tired, sad. “Take care of each other, okay?”

Jade leaves.

They discuss plans for escape in their downtime—which, for being downtime, is still constantly filled with Jade doing paperwork as he talks, apparently having no difficulty multitasking at all. Architect, Mythra’s gonna murder Citan for how much paperwork he just casually unloads on Jade all the time. She’s glad Jade started letting her help with the less complicated shit, not that even her help really puts a meaningful dent in the pile. Anyway. When they aren’t silently doing paperwork together, or Jade lecturing her about how to keep her act up and keep Citan from getting suspicious, they make escape plans.

It mostly consists of Mythra tossing around ideas she’s had while Jade shoots them down. She’d let him just work this out himself, but first of all she can’t stand _not_ working on this, for her own sake. She’s thinking about it all the time! She might as well share her thoughts!! And second of all she’s not entirely sure Jade _would_ think it out all the way on his own. She loves him, she trusts him and his insane ability to think plans through, _but_ …

She thinks maybe he’s stuck, just a little. If he’s known this has been happening for as long as that note says he’s known… even with the resets… Well, Mythra can’t say for sure, because she’s not actually in Jade’s head ( _just his emotions_ ) but a part of her wonders if some part of him stopped considering escape a real option. Sure, the problem re: his memories is a dicey one, but… Well if Mythra’d found a note like that first thing she woke up, she’d probably go kill her driver immediately. Can’t be sad about losing memories you haven’t made yet.

But Mythra is Mythra. And Jade is Jade.

And—

“I’m sorry, Mythra, it’s just occurred to me,” Jade interjects, as he turns away from his desk to look at her. She’s perched obnoxiously in his armchair, sitting on the arm rather than the seat because listen it’s what’s comfiest right now, elbow resting on her knees, hand propping her chin up. “But you have absolutely no real fighting experience, do you?”

“Uh, rude,” Mythra spits. Like okay no, Galea’s a scientist, not a fighter, but that doesn’t mean Mythra hasn’t tussled with local monsters or Literally Every Willing Person On This Base plenty of times before. “I do too!”

“No tactical sense, though, if your plans are any clue,” Jade sighs.

“Hey!”

Maybe he’s got a point, but Mythra still wants to ask how the hell _he_ has any of that if all he’s doing is paperwork all the time. ( _Maybe—that’s the thing about blades, though. Real, not artificial blades. Even if they don’t remember, the knowledge they gained in previous lifetimes builds up. It’s probably the same for artificial blades, but who knows how much older Jade actually is than her. Some blades stick around for thousands of years._ )

And anyway, Jade is getting to his feet, so Mythra forgets about all that.

“We’ll have to remedy this,” Jade says, like it’s a great chore. “Come on.”

Only then does Mythra realize that Jade intends to _spar_ with her. She practically jumps to her feet. She’s always wanted to do that, but the asshole would never let her!!

Things are pretty different now, aren’t they, though.

No one even _asks_ where they’re going, which is weird, and a freedom that Mythra finds herself enjoying even still, since she’d been on house arrest with the rest of them in the labs for… it was almost a month, wasn’t it? It’s definitely been a month by now, closer to a month and a half, that everyone else has been locked in there. Mythra’s ether boils to think of her family trapped, but: all the reason to work quicker. Telling herself that a spar counts as prep work considering Jade seems to think of it as such makes her feel a little better about how excited she is for it.

The little arena is empty, and Mythra takes her place at one end, and Jade takes his place at the other.

And then he summons his spear.

( _frigid cold Foresight warns her but he’s still faster than she can react_

 _pain searing through her abdomen_ )

Fear deftly grabs Mythra by the throat and proverbially slams her to the ground, for how suddenly her core pounds, for how tight her lungs are. She shakes it off as well as she can, not really conscious of _why_ , all of a sudden, every inch of her is screaming to get out get out get out. It’s stupid? She’s fine? She’s never reacted to a spar like this, so what the fuck—

It doesn’t go well.

The spar, that is.

Like, Mythra expected to get her ass kicked, but. Maybe not so _fantastically_.

“Would it have killed you to hold back just a little?” Mythra grumbles, as she picks herself back up. She’s sore all over.

“I was,” Jade says.

“Doubt it,” Mythra counters, but then again her own reflexes were… _way_ worse than they should have been. Even when with Foresight giving her a heads up and ample time to react, it was like it still wasn’t enough? Jade must be one speedy bastard.

That or dying and resetting set her back.

Mythra really hopes it’s not that one.

“Mythra,” calls out a new voice—Hubert’s voice. Architect, she hasn’t interacted with Hubert much since. Well.

…Anyway.

“Didn’t know we had an audience,” Mythra calls, chipper.

“Can you come with me?” Hubert asks, and he sounds. Concerned. Huh.

“Suuure?” Mythra says, drawing the sound out.

“Just Mythra,” Hubert interjects, when Jade starts to follow after her.

“I don’t think so,” Jade counters, his smile sharp. Feels kind of nice when he’s using that terrifying thing to back her up, actually.

“Yeah, I don’t see why he can’t come?” Mythra adds.

Hubert scowls, but finally caves, rolling his eyes dramatically. Apparently that hasn’t changed about him. “Fine,” he relents, and turns dramatically on his heel. Nothing to do but follow him, so they do. Hubert ushers them to the base infirmary, all-but shoving them into a room. “There, sit,” he instructs, gesturing to the cot.

What is this, a medical checkup? “Sup, doc?” Mythra asks, though she does as told. Hubert glares at her. Jade settles himself into the corner of the room, watching, rapt.

Hubert doesn’t answer right away, too busy wrapping Mythra up in ether. He hums to himself, short and frustrated, though Mythra definitely feels him _healing_ her. She appreciates that. Jade hit _hard_.

“I _cannot_ believe you were dense enough to fight in those conditions,” Hubert snaps at Mythra, and Mythra blinks, taken aback.

“What?”

“Are you saying you didn’t notice slow reaction times? Fighting being a little more difficult than usual? Fear—or something else—gripping you too hard for you to think straight?”

Mythra blushes, because, yeah, but.

“What is that like a _thing_?” she asks.

Hubert rolls his eyes. “Yes, Mythra, that is _a thing_ ,” he says. “It’s called a _trauma response._ For the life of me I’m not sure what caused it but watching you playfight while your body was _actively working against you_ was the most painful thing I’ve ever watched, I think. And more than that: _baffling._ I know you’re a few weeks old, but unless something’s happened to you in those few weeks that none of us were aware of, I cannot imagine why a blade as young as you is storing a trauma response. There’s no reason for your body to have recorded that while your core trashed the memories.”

“…oh,” Mythra says, quiet.

Jade shoots her a warning look, but he looks distinctly aware of the same thing she is, and just as uncomfortable about the notion.

Getting murdered once by the blade in front of her would probably be plenty of reason for her body to scream at her, huh?

“Well that sucks,” Mythra says, trying to not give Hubert too much room to think about how she suddenly understands what’s wrong and isn’t keen on telling. “Is there any way to—stop this? Like…”

“Avoiding whatever caused it is the go-to advice,” Hubert says, still scowling. “Though I still don’t understand what in the world—”

“May I try something?” Jade asks.

“Sure,” Mythra says.

“What kind of something?” Hubert demands.

“I promise I won’t touch her,” Jade assures him, and then apparently taking Mythra’s consent as enough, he summons his spear.

( _she didn’t know cold could BURN_

_but she was learning a lot of new things right now_

_like the man she considered friend apparently was happy enough to run her through if—_ )

“ _Architect_ ,” Hubert swears, startled, in response to the way Mythra’s ether spikes under his senses. “What—”

Jade dismisses his spear again, and Mythra breathes, a little easier.

“…I see,” Jade says.

“ _Why_ in the world would _that_ do anything,” Hubert demands, looking startled between Jade and Mythra.

“Practice weapons, then,” Jade concludes.

“Yeah, uh,” Mythra says. “Yeah…”

Hubert glares between the two of them for at least another twenty seconds, but Jade isn’t budging—he’s like a stone, when he wants to be—and Mythra’s too shaky to articulate it even if she _wanted_ to, which she doesn’t. Finally Hubert gives up.

“You know what, fine, whatever, I don’t want to know, and I guess it’s none of my business,” he says, and he withdraws his ether from Mythra. “ _At least_ avoid sparring when you’re feeling like that. I’d assume that’d be _common sense._ ”

Jade pokes his head into the room where Mythra and Galea are working, supervised by Citan.

“How are things going?” Jade asks, curious, nosy.

“Great!” Galea answers, chipper.

“ _Boring_ ,” Mythra groans, and Jade cracks a smile. At least she doesn’t have to lie about _everything._

“Slow,” Citan says, and Galea shoots him a glare while Mythra flinches. Jade mentally readjusts his timetable. If Citan is growing impatient, they have less time than Jade would like.

“Well, I’m glad to hear things are coming along.” Jade smiles, gleeful in a way that’s obviously false, clearly pretentious, just because he likes unsettling people. Of course, everyone in this room is used to his humor by now, so they’re mostly unfazed. Citan even shakes his head all exasperated, his smile almost fond, and Jade routinely kills the bit of his core that _sings_ at what almost looks like affection from his driver.

He wishes he could leave then and there, but he _did_ come here for reasons other than being nosy, so he levels his gaze with Mythra, and he asks: “Do you need anything?”

Mythra shakes her head, slight. Her expression suggests she’s got a handle on this, even if the emotion bleed tells Jade of her discomfort. Well. He’ll take her word for it.

“Actually,” Galea says, and Jade raises his eyebrows in surprise. “I had something for you, Jade. You should ask—wait. Don’t ask Anna. Actually I don’t think anyone knows where I put it, I’ll have to get it for you.”

“Alright,” Jade says, though he doubts it’s important enough to warrant this.

Even still, Galea pushes away from her desk. “Will you…?” she asks, looking to Mythra, then cuts herself off. The expressions they exchange speak volumes, though, for a blade who’s not meant to remember her previous driver at all. Jade hopes Citan didn’t notice. Or that he doesn’t care. Odds are good that it could be one of those two. Anyway, instead Galea says: “I’ll be right back,” and slides past Jade out of the room.

Jade sends Mythra an apology along the emotion bleed, knowing well enough Citan’s not going to be paying attention to it. He follows after Galea.

“You do realize I don’t really have time to be fetching documents, anymore,” Jade says as they walk.

“Oh no it’s not that,” Galea assures him.

“Hey,” Klaus calls, as they walk past the kitchen. “You got time for coffee? I can make either of you a mug while I’m making my own—”

“Still working, Klaus,” Galea replies, sharp.

“Jade?”

“Once I’m off the clock.”

“You’re never off the clock, asshole.”

Jade just shoots Klaus a smile, and leaves Klaus to his coffee, while Galea stops at her desk, rummaging through her drawer. Whatever she’s looking for she seems to have shoved towards the back of it, so no wonder she had to come get it herself.

“There we go,” Galea says, and then takes the folded paper she retrieved and stashes it amongst some blank papers and a few with weeks’ old info that she probably pulled out of her trash, from the looks of the coffee stains. It’ll make a passable decoy so long as no one looks too closely, though the fact it _needs_ a decoy makes Jade reconsider his earlier stance on this not being important. That’s what he gets for discrediting Galea so immediately. Shame on him, he should have known better.

“Thank you, Galea, you know I do love paperwork,” Jade jokes, as he takes the stack from her. He knows better than to look at it now, so near Citan. “I’ll see it done by tomorrow.”

“Take as long as you need,” Galea replies, which she _would_ have said if she’d actually handed him a stack of paperwork, so he can’t blame her for missing how he was fishing for a deadline as far as the contents of the note. If it actually has a deadline, hopefully Galea will have included said information _in_ the note.

“I will, then,” Jade says, and maybe it’s a little scripted, but who knows who might be listening.

“I should, uh, get back,” Galea says, then, nervously tucking strands of her long hair behind her ears. “Less time I leave Mythra alone with him, the better.”

“Mm,” Jade hums, noncommittal, though Galea’s right.

So Galea makes her way back that direction, and Jade makes his way out of the labs, passing Klaus because the layout of the labs dictates he pass through the kitchen before he reaches the front doors.

“You sure you don’t want a coffee break? Fifteen minutes, come on, you work too much,” Klaus calls, waving a mug that he’s apparently made for Jade. It’s nice of him. Jade still doesn’t have time. He’s eager to see what in the world Galea put in this note she’s smuggling him.

“Pass.”

“If you promise you’ll bring the mug back, you can take the coffee with you,” Klaus offers, and that’s also extremely nice of him.

…alright, then. Wordlessly, Jade tucks Galea’s papers to his chest and takes the mug from Klaus, drinking just enough that it’s not going to be obnoxious to carry around. It’s sweeter than he likes, but he knows Anna’s corrupted the lot of them here, and he doesn’t have time to be picky, right now.

“Thank you,” he says, instead, and leaves it at that.

Of course the coffee is ice cold by the time Jade’s navigated the base and returned to his room to enjoy it, but Jade’s well used to every drink he touches ending this way, so he barely notices it. He’s too distracted by extracting Galea’s note and reading it over and.

Hm.

Of all the things he was expecting, this wasn’t even close to one of them.

> _I doubted you’d have much time to do your own research, right now, so: this. I can’t exactly guarantee the accuracy of it, because I asked Anna, but, well, you know how her memory is. And the details she gave seem too specific to be wrong._
> 
> _How in the world she knows this much about the topic I’m afraid to find out, but that’s the only question I couldn’t get her to answer. Anyway. Here’s what I learned, compiled. I know it’s not a very appealing option, but it is an option._

And below that is a list of questions Galea asked about flesh eaters, followed by answers and information she was able to glean from Anna. She’s right. The information is much too specific to discredit offhand, and all the logic aligns with the little Jade already knew about flesh eaters. Anna’s always had a propensity to get obscure historical facts completely right first try. Why not this?

Still, though…

Jade isn’t sure what he feels, as he reads through the information, commits it to memory. A way for blades to escape resonance, albeit a somewhat gruesome one. A way for him to survive, memories intact, regardless of whether or not Citan lives. And for all that it is gruesome, it has a higher chance of success than the memory patch. Jade wouldn’t be gambling his memories. Just his health.

He tucks the information away to think about later, and tucks Galea’s note away with his own hidden on the bookshelf. Logic says it’d be safer to split them up, but Jade knows that either note alone would condemn him, so he might as well stash them both in the same place. It’d make it easier for a future Jade to find, anyway, if worst came to worst.

And while he painstakingly turns over his options in the back of his mind like sifting through a bucket of sharp stones, hoping to find one that cuts less than the rest, Jade sets about doing ( _Citan’s_ ) paperwork.

He’s at it for maybe an hour when there’s a knock on his door.

“It’s me,” calls Mythra’s voice, somewhat tight. The resonance link hums with her proximity.

“Come in,” Jade calls back to her, not looking up.

Mythra closes the door behind her and then immediately throws herself face first into Jade’s bed, screaming into his pillow. You know what? That’s fair.

“Sounds like you had fun,” Jade teases once she’s done, without any real mirth in his voice. The emotion bleed screams with all of Mythra’s frustration and Jade swallows it as well as he can, though it makes his ether run faster than he would like, his own body pulsing with all of her anger. He’s still not used to that; no surprise, considering the emotion bleed from Citan’s end is still that roaring tsunami of apathy.

Mythra is silent for a few moments, and then she lifts her head looking towards him, desperate. “This is _exhausting,”_ she complains, voice sharp. “I don’t know how you do it! Keeping up this many masks _sucks_.”

“Masks?” Jade asks. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Yes he does.

“Fuck you,” Mythra says, with no venom. She flops back down.

Jade hums, but sees no reason to inquire any further. Nothing’s _wrong,_ Mythra’s just weathering the road they have in front of them, and if she wants to complain to lighten its load, there’s no reason for Jade to stop her, nothing else Jade can offer her than an ear to listen. He continues filling out paperwork, continues breathing against the strength of the emotion bleed, continues rolling around what options he has in his mind until, proverbially, his palms bleed.

“…I hate not being able to talk to Galea…” Mythra says, quiet. She’s rolled over onto her back, staring up at the ceiling.

“I know,” Jade says, because whether he wanted to or not he’s become very familiar with the taste of how much Mythra misses her mother.

“It’s so stupid. I mean, you’re here, Jade, and I guess that’s fine.” Her tone says she doesn’t really think so. Jade can’t argue. He knows he’s not great at being any kind of emotional pillar or wall of strength. “But I used to be able to bitch about anything with her, and she’d get it, and it’d feel better, you know? I miss that. I miss feeling better.”

Jade sighs.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Whatever.” She throws her arm across her eyes. The strength of her frustration fizzles, drowns under Citan’s apathy. If Jade knew how to buoy her up, he would.

But he doesn’t, so he just does his paperwork.

It’s silent for a few minutes, and then the bed creaks, Mythra sitting up. She’s staring at—not him. His desk.

“Hey…” she says, curious. “Is that… coffee? Where’d you get coffee—wait.” She swings her legs off the bed, hands clinging to the mattress to hold her balance steady as she leans forward. “That’s Klaus’ mug.”

Oh, yes. Jade’d forgotten to drink the rest of it. “He practically shoved it in my hands as I was leaving, earlier,” Jade explains.

Mythra snorts, eyebrows raised. “Did he, now,” she laughs, and strangely enough Jade doesn’t get the joke.

“What?”

Mythra watches him a second, then obviously decides she’s not telling him. “Nothing,” she says, sweetly. And then she hops off the bed and walks over. “Hey, if you’re not gonna finish it, can I have it? The stuff in the machines this side of base tastes horrible.”

Jade certainly cannot in good conscience deny her this taste of home, so he answers by picking the mug up and offering it to her. She takes it and squirrels a sip away, clearly cautious of how little she has to enjoy. She makes a face after that first drink, but seems to reconsider her disgust after a moment.

“Actually, almost tastes better ice cold,” she mutters, then walks it and herself over to the armchair. Jade appreciates her not drinking coffee on his bed.

They don’t talk for the rest of the afternoon. Something about the coffee seems to soothe Mythra, at least.

For all that it would be best to be cautious, it is also foolish to not use all the assets at his disposal. So Jade drops a stack of “paperwork” on Galea’s desk while she’s busy elsewhere, a note attached to the front so she knows it’s from him, a message stashed into the middle. At the very least, he can reasonably trust Citan not to (currently) have a reason to snoop through _Galea’s_ _paperwork,_ and he trusts Galea’s coworkers won’t be interested enough to look, either.

He returned the mug he borrowed to the kitchen when he first walked in, of course—the kitchen is the first part of the labs anyone accesses—but he still seeks Klaus out before he leaves. Klaus is still loitering in the kitchen, which makes Jade wonder if this is exactly the time of day Klaus always makes coffee.

“You got time to stay this time?” Klaus asks, hopeful.

“No,” Jade answers. “But if I could have another cup to take with me, I would appreciate it.”

“Oh,” Klaus says, seeming surprised. Jade almost hates to add:

“It’s for Mythra, actually. She’s been complaining nonstop about the taste of the coffee over there, and…”

“Hey, she needs whatever peace she can get, with _Citan_ driving her,” Klaus interjects, spitting Jade’s driver’s name like it’s a curse. Well, he’s not wrong. “And it’s really no wonder she can’t get it how she likes it, there’s no way any of those community pots have enough sugar to sustain her.” To Jade’s almost horror, Klaus demonstrates this by dunking what must be half the carton of sugar into the mug he’s making for Mythra. Alright then.

“Thank you,” Jade says. “I’ll take it, give it to her when she wraps up here.”

“Sure,” Klaus answers. “You don’t want to stick around for her?”

“I’m terribly busy.”

“You could bring some of your paperwork with you, you know. Do it here.”

Jade appreciates the offer, and aches in some part of him for that privilege, but too much casual time spent in the labs just gives Citan the knowledge of what Jade has to lose. As much as he cares for his friends, indulging in their friendship so brazenly is not something he can afford. He takes the wistful desire and smothers it, stashing it somewhere neither Citan nor Mythra can reach—though it probably doesn’t matter, for how loudly the emotion bleed clamors with Mythra’s dread and simmering fury as it pounds its fists against the barrier of Citan’s apathy. Jade tries to tune it out before he gets sick.

“Maybe another time,” he tells Klaus.

Klaus sighs, disappointed, but doesn’t press. “Do you want a coffee of your own?” he asks, instead. Then he reconsiders. “…I guess you’re out of hands, though, and I’m not allowed to leave.”

“Perhaps next time I’ll think to bring a thermos.” Mythra might appreciate her coffee not being ice cold when she gets it, but Jade’s afraid he can’t do anything about that. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Klaus.”

“Oh, uh. Yeah.”

When Mythra leaves the labs, trailing after Citan and grateful she won’t get in trouble for ditching him the moment they’re out, she stops before she’s quite out the door, because she’s realized that Klaus hasn’t moved an inch. He’s staring at about the spot Mythra’s occupying now, as if in a trance.

“…you just gonna keep standing there?” Mythra asks, and is grateful that her personality just being Like This means no one squints about memories she’s not supposed to have.

“What,” Klaus says, shaking his head as he snaps out of it. “Shit. Nothing.”

“You’re—” _as bad as Anna,_ Mythra wants to tease, but she catches herself before she says it, bites it down. There’s no point saying anything else, because Citan’s still _right fucking there,_ and even the slightest interaction with Klaus could end up telling him too much. “Weird,” Mythra finishes, just so she doesn’t leave the sentence hanging, her ether boiling in the back of her throat at the sad look Klaus gives her.

At least when she sees the coffee Jade got her she forgets about that almost entirely.

( _And she keeps laughing to herself, too._

_Like, okay, ew. Klaus, get better taste, maybe?_

_But it’s fucking hilarious that Jade seems to legitimately have no idea._ )

The note Jade left to Galea reads:

> _I’m considering my options._
> 
> _What does the memory patch feel like from the driver’s end? If it cannot be done in complete secret, it’s not an option._
> 
> _Keep stalling. There’s no telling what Citan will do to Mythra once she’s irrelevant._

Ah.

Galea sighs as she considers it. Drafts her reply.

> _It requires a soft reset. I definitely felt it._
> 
> _Should I tell the others, or wait until we have more concrete plans? They could help brainstorm._

And tomorrow, like clockwork, Jade returns with a reply and leaves with a mug of coffee.

> _For the better. That route has other complications._
> 
> _Wait to tell them. But if they suggest any good ideas on their own, pass them my way. I’m sure you’re all joking about it over there._

They keep passing notes like that in secret. It’s slow, but it’s all they have. Jade makes it clear he doesn’t think it’s safe for him to spend too much time around the labs, anymore.

> _Anna isn’t so much as joking as she is losing her fucking mind, but I get what you mean. We haven’t had any real plans, though. You mind sharing yours?_

Jade’s reply is short, infuriating.

> _Not yet._

He doesn’t send anything else for days.

“No to the memory patch, huh,” Mythra says, sitting cross-legged on the floor, bent over a stack of paperwork to ease Jade’s load. Her coffee mug is placed, drained, out of the way.

“You read the note, Citan would kill me if he knew.”

“And if it worked?”

“He’d shatter me.”

Based on her silence, Mythra understands why that’s not an option.

“Besides,” Jade continues, back to her but still talking. “Even assuming it worked, it would only solve the problem of my memories. It wouldn’t prevent the both of us from getting tossed into the military pool once Citan is dead.”

“…I mean, if we killed him in the labs, where Galea would be able to find our core crystals.”

Jade stops writing, for a second. She has a point. The plan still has holes, of course, but she has a point. And if he kills Citan right after he installs the memory patch, it won’t matter if Citan knew it was happening. They certainly have a daily window for the opportunity, as well, where Citan and Mythra are both conveniently in the labs.

“That leaves a lot of things for your family to shoulder in our absence, and requires them to successfully hide our core crystals for approximately three days, all while the authorities likely try them for murder,” Jade muses. “But it’s not a half bad start.”

“I mean, there’s always Galea’s idea,” Mythra counters. “It’s gross, but.”

Jade isn’t sure how to politely say that having only Anna’s hunches—despite how accurate they tend to be—to go off of isn’t enough for him to feel comfortable about it, exactly. Never mind all the things he would be risking.

( _Permanently damage his core, or gamble with his memories?_ _Neither is wholly appealing._ )

“That leaves you dead when Citan dies,” Jade says, instead of any of his other concerns. “I’m not sure I could get everyone out of the base by myself.”

Mythra scoffs. “Look, I know one blade against everyone is horrible odds but also that one blade is _you,_ Jade. If anyone could handle it—”

“I’ll think about it.”

( _As if he could do anything else._ )

It’s really hard _not_ to feel Jade’s quietly building stress in the emotion bleed, to be honest. Citan just doesn’t fucking care, the asshole. Mythra does, though. Mythra does a lot.

So like.

“You could do your own damn paperwork, you know,” she snaps to Citan on the way from the labs to the rest of the base. No, that wouldn’t fix all of Jade’s problems, but it’d be a fucking _start._

Citan just laughs. Mythra _guesses_ she’s glad he isn’t angry, but being belittled is worse. Like, way worse.

“Why should I?” Citan asks, shooting her an unaffected smile, as smug as he always is. “That’s what Jade’s for, isn’t it?”

It’s a near thing Mythra doesn’t punch his face in. Or put her sword through his gut.

“He—you can’t just—” Mythra starts, so full of anger she doesn’t know what to do with it other than scream, seeing as physical violence is absolutely not an option, here. “You give him _way_ too much!” she settles on, finally.

“He can handle it.”

“Yeah, and you’re an asshole.”

Citan just chuckles again, which makes Mythra’s ether _really_ boil in her veins. “Am I, now?” he asks, unbothered. “I thought it was a driver’s duty to push their blade to their full potential?”

Mythra scoffs, loud and furious. _How_ can he say that with a straight face!?

“You are _not_ doing that,” she laughs, angry.

“Oh? I’m not?” Citan asks in return.

 _No,_ Mythra wants to scream. She wants to scream about all he’s doing is dragging Jade down and making Jade’s life hell. She wants to scream about how drivers don’t just _treat_ their blades like this, she wants to scream _Galea would never,_ but. She knows that’d get her killed. So she holds her tongue.

She’s so enraged she wants to cry, but like hell she’ll do that in front of Citan, so like.

She just turns on her heel and walks off, instead. Can’t get killed if she doesn’t open her mouth. Perfect plan.

Citan’s definitely getting suspicious.

And/or running out of patience for Mythra.

Just what Jade needed, really. Another concern for the pile.

Citan lets himself into Jade’s room without knocking. Jade is doing paperwork, of course, though he stops to watch his driver enter the room and—leaving the door wide open—casually go sit on Jade’s bed as if he owns the place. ( _If asked, he’d say he does._ ) Jade breathes very carefully, not trusting his driver enough to really take his eyes off of him, but not wanting to look _too_ paranoid. He goes back to his paperwork, even though he moves at a snail’s pace in comparison to when he’s alone, or even when Mythra’s in here.

“It’s taking Galea quite some time to do measurements, isn’t it,” Citan comments. Jade glances back up at him. Citan’s expression is bored, the curl of his mouth leaning towards petulant. Of course it is, he’s not getting his way right now.

“Respectfully, sir,” Jade counters, with not an ounce of respect. With some force he checks something off on the paperwork before him. “How should you know how long it takes to do measurements? You aren’t a scientist.”

“The PhD on my wall says otherwise, Jade.”

Jade sighs, adjusts his glasses with his free hand. He’s seen the PhD on Citan’s wall. It does, in fact, say otherwise, but frankly Jade has never seen that degree path in any college he’s looked at, and he’s not wholly convinced the PhD isn’t counterfeit. After all, he knows better than anyone exactly how much money Citan has. Citan is likely lounging in a throne built by bribery and blackmail ( _never mind Jade’s sweat and ether_ ) and Jade just has to put up with that, doesn’t he?

“To be fair, they _are_ stepping on the toes of God,” Jade says, instead of commenting on said PhD or the degree that Citan purportedly has. “Even if they did succeed once, Klaus has confided to me that it was on accident. You’ll just have to be patient like the rest of us.”

Citan… doesn’t really look amused. Jade adjusts his glasses again rather than flinching. He doesn’t turn back to his paperwork.

“I’m half convinced Galea’s stalling,” Citan says, but the twitch of his eyebrows makes Jade pretty certain that Galea’s not the only one Citan thinks is stalling.

The emotion bleed stays crystal clear, clean of dread that Jade has carefully slaughtered and hidden under the rug. He doesn’t think about how Citan has almost certainly encountered his stalling tactics before. He doesn’t think about how Citan knows more of his tricks than he himself does, and that he doesn’t know which tricks Citan already knows, already suspects. No, all Jade does is drop his hand from his glasses and smile, attuning his emotions to the steady stream of Mythra’s frustrated boredom, amplifying that for Citan to feel if he cares to pull his wall of apathy down long enough to check.

“I could talk to her about it,” Jade offers, already intending not to and simply coming back with a lie tomorrow.

Citan shakes his head, though. “Whatever, she can have another month if she wants it,” he says. “The others are sending in reports fine, after all. But I’ll start sending someone else with Mythra. There’s no real reason for me to go, after all. She seems to be behaving herself.”

Jade’s smile does not shift an inch.

Not. An. Inch.

Mythra takes him to the arena to wreck all the training dummies she can get her hands on. The fact that a solid twenty minutes of senseless violence doesn’t settle any of the restlessness in his core worries Jade. If only he had time to worry about it.

“Oh thank Architect, I was worried when I felt that much ether after I saw the two of you head this way,” Hubert says from the arena’s side entrance. He takes in the destroyed dummies, each either rent to shreds by Jade’s ice or disintegrated by Mythra’s light. He scowls, ever-so-slightly. “Was this every one the base owned?”

“Yep!” Mythra says, brightly. _She_ seems more at ease, at least.

Jade smiles, just to unsettle Hubert. “Replacements come out of Citan’s paycheck, after all.”

Hubert still looks angry, for a moment, but then something about Jade’s vindictive tone seems to strike a chord with him. He doesn’t smile, exactly, but he doesn’t look like he minds it much at all, either.

“Carry on, then,” he tells them, and walks away.

“Galea,” Klaus calls, his voice weighty. “Coffee.”

He’s sitting in the kitchenette, sprawled back in one of the table’s chairs, one arm over the back of it. There’s a mug sitting in front of him, a mug sitting across from him. His expression is just as weighty as his voice.

Ah. He wants to talk.

Galea thinks not.

“Oh, thanks for that! I was just about to make some—” she says, brightly, snagging the mug and starting to exit the kitchen.

“ _Galea_ ,” Klaus says, a sharpness to his voice. “I need to ask you about Mythra, and I’d really rather have this conversation while Anna’s asleep, considering.”

Considering Mythra, memoryless, is one of the Bad topics for Anna. ( _Worst any of them have seen, actually_.) But Mythra is also not a topic Galea is willing to discuss with Klaus, for several obvious reasons. So—

“Anna’s basically nocturnal now,” Galea jokes, which is true, for how many depression naps she takes. Galea swears she barely ever sees Anna anymore, and Myyah about as little, for all that she’s glued herself to Anna’s side. “Plenty of time to have this conversation later. Or, I don’t know, tomorrow?” She innocently takes a sip of her coffee—he _did_ make it just like she likes it, wonderful bribery, not going to work—and takes another idle step towards the door.

The chair scrapes. Klaus gets to his feet, takes a few steps towards her. Galea just raises her eyebrows at him. What’s he going to do? Physically stop her from leaving? She’ll dump the coffee on his nice shirt, first. Maybe it’ll actually get him to wash it.

Klaus stops. Makes that face he makes when he’s very carefully reigning back his bad mood.

“I’m just worried about you,” he says, with way more edge on it than there needs to be, emotion bleeding into the tremble of his voice he can’t quite smooth out.

…Galea feels a little bad.

“What for?” she asks, because she supposes she could be kind enough to humor him when he’s worried about her. Not that he _needs_ to be worried, but she can’t exactly tell him that.

“I just…” Klaus begins, then seems to rethink it, striking his knuckles against the table a few times to vent his frustration. “I get it. Everything has gone to shit. We’re all grieving. But you’re…” He sighs. Galea can peg the exact moment he decides to give her the benefit of the doubt, and silently thanks the Architect for it. “Are you handling things okay?”

Galea hums, intentionally tired. “I’m handling it fine, yeah,” she answers.

As soon as she’s said it she’s realized that it wasn’t the answer Klaus wanted to hear. Anger snaps across his face. He shakes his head, his smile sharp.

“No, see,” Klaus says, just shy of furious. “You’re either hiding something, Galea, or you’re in the worst denial I’ve _ever_ seen, and we both lived with Myyah those first three days after Poppi died. There is no way in hell you should be _this_ okay with Mythra being—being—” He gestures with his hands, at a loss for words, clearly struggling to pin down his grief. Again, Galea feels sorry for him, but…

“I’m fine,” she says, because there’s too much on the line to tell him the truth. “Really.”

“ _Galea_.”

“Thanks for the coffee.” She raises the mug to him in a wave of parting, then ducks out of the kitchen to lock herself and her current work in her room so he can’t bother her. That won’t stop him forever, but. Well. Maybe it’ll buy her time.

“Do you really think this will work?” Jade asks.

“You just don’t think it will,” Mythra counters, glaring at him just a little. He’s got a point, but, he could at _least_ pretend to support her ideas more wholeheartedly sometimes.

“How should I know? Foresight is _your_ ability, not mine.”

They’re sitting on the floor of Jade’s room, for lack of better seating options available. Even though they don’t know if this will work, they can at least both agree that physical contact makes ether transfers between blades significantly easier to do.

“I think it’s worth a shot,” Mythra says, all sharp smiles and faked confidence that she figures Jade feels, but appreciates him not commenting on. The fact she’s never pushed Foresight more than, like, two minutes into the future definitely gives her some doubts, but maybe if they gave it a power boost? The logic _holds,_ and Jade is the most powerful blade she knows, barring, you know, an Aegis or an Aegis prototype. “Besides,” she adds, a little more sincerely, not quite meeting Jade’s eyes. “There’s no reason _not_ to try. Maybe it’ll tell us something.”

Jade fixes his glasses, like he always does when he needs a second to stall. His smile might not be wholly sincere, but it doesn’t feel entirely condescending. “You have a point,” he allows.

She holds her hand out and wiggles her fingers, impatient. Jade sighs and takes her hand.

She knew his ether was going to be cold and yet she still wasn’t prepared for it, prepared for the sensation of ice in her veins, smooth but _freezing,_ sliding down her throat. Mythra grits her teeth and closes her eyes, bearing it. At least light and ice aren’t diametrically opposed elements, so though they don’t combine as cleanly as ice might with, say, water, there’s no backfire under Mythra’s skin, just a raging, subzero river she has to sink her feet down into the bed of and stand her ground against. _Architect,_ Jade’s feeding her a lot of ether.

Well, go big or go home, right?

Mythra gathers Jade’s ether in her grasp and concentrates, tapping into the bit of her core where Foresight is kept. She gets a flicker of images, of insights—things that are bound to happen in the next few seconds—but she ignores those. Instead she takes Jade’s ether and she _pours._

Mostly, it just gives her a headache. She holds onto the brittle connection anyway, ignores Jade’s doubt and concern.

“Keep feeding me ether,” she instructs. “Almost got it.”

The latter thing is a lie, but, Jade doesn’t need to know that. Because, in all honesty, Mythra can’t even really tell how far into the future she _is_ pushing Foresight to show her. It’s not like it comes with a timestamp. Her only metric for how well it’s working is how much her head feels like it’s going to explode.

But just like every time she’s nudged Foresight to give her more than a few seconds before, she just kind of thinks of a timeframe, and _wishes,_ and _reaches_ for it. A few weeks out should be good, right? Honestly, though Mythra would _like_ answers, she’ll settle just for knowing they make it out—

A vision comes to her.

_Jade’s hand on her arm_

_dragging her through_

_why is there so much snow_

_it looks like a blizzard for some reason_

_Jade’s unaffected, of course,_

_and_

Jade abruptly snaps the flow of ether and yanks his hand away from hers. Mythra’s about to ask what the fuck, actually, they almost _had_ it, or they had _something,_ they should try again—

But then she notes Jade is smiling his tightest, politest smile over her shoulder, and that the resonance link sings with Citan’s proximity. Oh, shit. How much did he- Architect this is an awkward picture isn’t it- fuck, shit, did he _feel_ all that ether—

“Did you need something, sir?” Jade asks, all polite and voice free of barbs, as if he didn’t mind being interrupted at all. He’s so much better at this than Mythra is, it almost makes her jealous.

Citan doesn’t ask what they were doing. That’s… worse, actually.

“Can you help me with something, Jade?” Citan asks, instead.

Jade nods and gets to his feet. Mythra gets to hers, too, but Citan shoots her a _look,_ and it’s not sharp enough to be called disgust, but Mythra can tell she’s not wanted. From her driver, it feels like a slap to the face, even if she doesn’t _actually_ care what he thinks.

“Just Jade,” Citan says, as if the look didn’t do enough. “Though I appreciate you wanting to help, Mythra. It just won’t be necessary.”

Yeah, sure. He “appreciates” it. Mythra only just refrains from rolling her eyes.

Jade nods for Citan to lead the way rather than speaking, which Mythra notes as weird. The little smile Jade sends her before he leaves the room after Citan and closes the door behind him is _also_ weird—from him, that’s almost a goodbye hug! Mythra stares at the closed door for a second or two, trying to figure out _what_ the _fuck…_

…and then she really, properly takes stock of the emotion bleed.

Dread flows like a river from Jade, overwhelming, all-consuming. Like he’s walking to his death.

Citan… wouldn’t, right? Well, of course, he _would,_ but. Not _now,_ right? Not- not Jade, not before Mythra, that doesn’t make any sense.

Worry wrapped around her throat like iron claws, Mythra checks Foresight, pushes it—but it’s burnt out after how far she pushed it, earlier. She definitely isn’t going to get the minutes or hours ahead she’ll need to tell. _Fuck._ Shit.

She stays put, though. If she’s _wrong,_ and she makes even one misstep, like running after them to prevent something that doesn’t actually need preventing, it’ll be a death sentence for the both of them. And if her horrible hunch is right, and Citan _does_ kill Jade, well. Then he won’t live much longer, after that. Mythra will see to it.

And… maybe Jade’s rubbed off on her, but after she’s decided on her if/then murder, she realizes that that’s… not enough. She can decide to kill Citan all she wants, but what if something goes wrong? What if something goes wrong, and she’s not there when Jade wakes back up?

Well… there _is_ something she can do about that. And she’d be a fool not to do it.

Mythra counts to a hundred before she moves, and then to two hundred just to be sure that Jade and Citan aren’t on their way _back._ She wouldn’t dare be so reckless with Jade’s secrets.

Once she’s sure no one’s coming—and she checks Foresight twice just to be sure, even though it makes her head burn—Mythra slides over to Jade’s bookshelf. It takes her a second to remember which book it was, except its general location on the bottom shelf, but she has it after a moment. She tugs Jade’s note out, fishes a pen out of his desk, flips the note onto the back and begins writing.

> _If you ever get to four tallies, just kill him._
> 
> _Yeah, you’ll probably end up in the military blade pool, which I’ll admit probably won’t be glamorous but trust me I don’t think it could possibly get shittier than this. Your next driver WILL be better._
> 
> _I know you like keeping your memories, but if he dies day one you won’t have any memories to lose. And I’m tired of watching how he treats you. He treats you like shit! And you shouldn’t have to grovel and scrape for a driver who’d sooner kill you than care about you. You shouldn’t have to live each day dreading_
> 
> _Sorry. Guess I got a little carried away._
> 
> _Please don’t let this get to five tallies, Jade. Please._
> 
> _\- Mythra (a concerned friend)_
> 
> _Uh PS if you wake up memoryless and I’m gone then see if you can find Galea or Klaus or Myyah or Anna, if they’re still around. You can trust them. They’re your friends, too._

Jade lives.

But they’re running out of time.

Galea shoves another stack of “paperwork” into Jade’s hands for him to take with his daily coffee.

_Klaus is getting suspicious. I don’t know if I can keep not telling him._

_I’m working on it. Plotting to get all six of us out of here at once isn’t exactly easy._

_If you can think of a way to get us all out separately, that should be fine._

_I don’t think that’s possible, not with how heavily they’re watching you. They’d have to split you up on their own, first, and that won’t happen any time soon._

_What, can’t twist any arms?_

_Unfortunately, no._

“We _could_ take Citan with us,” Mythra suggests, brazen if a little quieter than normal. “Just knock him out or something. Leave him, I’dunno, half-dead?”

Jade looks to where she’s perched on his bed, eyebrows raised in disapproval. “You want to drag around a corpse?”

“He only needs to be alive enough for us not to die!”

“Were you always this morbid, or did I rub off on you.”

_You could leave us behind. If just you and Mythra got out, I could live with that._

_Nonnegotiable._

“Do you not want…” Mythra begins, from Jade’s armchair. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to eat his heart either, that’s gross.”

“I don’t have to eat it.”

“Still, gross.” Mythra sighs. “The… memory patch, maybe?”

“Not a safe bet at all,” Jade counters. “Never mind the fact that if it worked, your family—”

“They’re your friends, too,” Mythra interjects.

Jade adjusts his glasses and looks at her, perfect picture of a man who doesn’t think it so funny he’s been interrupted. Mythra just folds her arms across her chest and pouts. She’s _right,_ though.

“They will have to escape with _neither_ of us awake,” Jade continues, sharp. “Which is significantly worse than me trying to pull this off alone.”

“Then we let Citan live long enough for us to get out of here, hold him hostage—”

“That’s still a horrible idea and you know it, Mythra.”

“C’mon, you sure he wouldn’t behave if we threatened to kill him?”

Jade massages his temples. “We wouldn’t _actually_ want him dead, though, and he’d know that. He wouldn’t take the threats seriously.”

Mythra huffs, but Jade’s got a point.

The worst part, Jade thinks, is that their _best_ option involves him eating Citan’s heart and then praying that he avoids any of the various things that could go _immediately_ wrong with his health. And then, if he _is_ miraculously capable of fighting and processing ether properly immediately after the deed is done ( _despite most flesh eaters reportedly having trouble with that_ ), he still has to get all five of them and Mythra’s core crystal out of a base that will likely be on high alert, considering, you know, the _murder._

Of course, there’s a small chance that Anna’s bizarrely remembered facts are right, and that there are some flesh eaters who actually gain _more_ powers after the deed is done, but if there is a small chance for that being true then there is an infinitesimal chance that Jade will luck out and be one of them.

It’s possible, but a gamble.

Jade doesn’t like gambling.

_I’ve seen you forge Citan’s signature before. Are you sure you can’t, you know, speed the process along?_

_And alert Citan to the fact I’m trying to get you out? Sounds great._

_You could have just said no._

“We could—”

“Just get out of the room, Mythra, I’m not in the mood right now.”

A gamble.

All they have is a gamble.

Being dragged around the base as Citan’s shadow on some inane errand that definitely could not have required the both of them is definitely, constantly, Jade’s ( _least_ ) favorite part of the day. Citan has a few meetings with the committee lined up today, and Jade isn’t surprised he’s being forced to tag along, but still wishes he could do literally anything else. He wishes he could do literally anything else badly enough he finds himself daydreaming of all the paperwork he could be doing. Incredible.

One meeting down, two more to go. Mythra’s probably at the labs by now, accompanied by some blade-driver pair. Hubert and Flynn, if Jade remembers correctly, which he hopes Mythra gets to enjoy. The idea was to send a blade-driver pair instead of some random soldier specifically so Galea can cross reference resonance frequencies. Not a bad idea on Citan’s part—again, for as much as Jade loathes the man, he knows better than anyone that Citan isn’t _stupid,_ and he’s perfectly good at his job when he feels like doing it. If they’re lucky, Galea can twist that to buy them even more time, though Jade doesn’t have his hopes high on that front. Committee’s been talking about deadlines.

“Another month should be plenty of time, right?” Citan asks. My, have the stars aligned? Citan? Asking _Jade_ for his opinion?

Of course, he only asks after it matters, though. If he’d asked sooner, Jade would have told him he thought they should consult the scientist team for a ballpark estimate before they set any deadlines, and then he would have been promptly ignored. So. It’s not really a victory at all.

“We can hope,” Jade says, and adjusts his mental timeline. No amount of stalling Galea can pull at this point will save them. A month, then. A month to make a decision, to search for a better option than what they already have… Jade’s hopes aren’t high there, either.

“Honestly I look forward to it,” Citan says, shaking his head. “The sooner I can get rid of Mythra, the better.”

Jade nearly misses a step he’s so surprised to hear those words ( _though he really shouldn’t be_ ). Citan sends a look over his shoulder at him, eyebrows raised, amused.

“It’s not like I told Galea she could _keep_ her,” Citan says, smooth, wholly unbothered about how casually he’s discussing murder. “About time I toss Mythra back into the pool for military blades. She’d do better as one, anyway.”

They’re walking through a hallway. People pass by them, guards stand at doors. At least a dozen people within earshot, and Citan’s talking about this as casually as one would the weather. It’s insane. It’s disgusting. It makes Jade’s ether boil in his veins, rage bubbling up in his stomach. He keeps his gait carefully even, his eyes ahead, staring past Citan’s shoulder rather than at the man directly—a much better view than the slight twist of Citan’s face towards Jade, anyway. ( _Jade is, of course, walking one step behind Citan, rather than in pace with him._ )

“I really don’t pity her next driver,” Citan continues. “She’s awfully… high-maintenance. But I suppose that’s what you get when you spoil your blade.”

“Mm,” Jade says, noncommittal. He doesn’t really have to say anything at all, but releasing that tight note of a sound makes him feel a little bit less like he wants to scream. He counts how many people don’t even turn to give Citan the barest side-eye ( _surprise surprise! it’s all of them_ ) despite how blasé Citan is about this whole topic. Of murder.

Citan simply laughs to himself, shaking his head. “I’ve driven a lot of blades, but I swear you’re the only one I can stand, Jade,” he says, sending Jade a smile that’s almost _fond_.

Jade feels rather like he’s been punched in the gut. The note he makes in reply is a little tighter, just short of rage. The room’s temperature abruptly drops about ten degrees. Did Citan think that a compliment? Did— _how many blades, actually._ How many has Citan burned through, murdered, passed off elsewhere? How many—

“And Mythra? She’s probably the worst of—”

Jade doesn’t think.

Vision red, ether snaps into his hand in the shape of an answer. Citan’s back is already to him.

He plunges his spear into Citan’s— _not the heart!_ —gut, buries it as deep as he possibly can. And then?

Peace, for a second. Relief. That’s it. It’s over.

And then Jade’s mind catches up with his body.

“… _shit_ ,” he whispers.

It’s all well and good that Citan is dead, or, _mostly_ dead. ( _If a healing blade found them_ now, _Citan might still have chances of living_.) But now comes the rest of the puzzle, the part Jade could _never actually figure out how to solve._ He’s going to have to gamble, whether he likes it or not, because he let his anger get the best of him, which he _regrets,_ even if Citan dead by his hand makes his core sing with a satisfaction deeper than he knew he was capable of feeling. And now…

He has precious minutes, now, or _none_ of them are getting out of here. Heedless to the people watching, mind fixed on the one task he must see through or else it’s all for naught, Jade yanks his spear back out of Citan’s body. He shoves it unceremoniously to the ground, and then kneels down beside it to get to work.

In that instant, the base is hit with the worst blizzard in all of recorded Tethe’allan history.

Hubert abruptly looks up from the half-assed tests Galea is doing, though Mythra does the same a moment later. She squints in the direction of the sudden flare of ether, swallowing thickly around Jade’s cold determination and abating rage and—

Hey, wait a second.

“What is it?” Flynn asks, sending a concerned glance to his blade.

“That was… quite a disturbing flare of ether,” Hubert says, scowling in the same direction Mythra is right now. “I wonder what— _Mythra!?_ ”

Citan is dead.

Citan is dead, and the resonance keeping Mythra stable has begun to fray, which means her physical form wavers violently. Sweating, she holds it together, but that’s not going to last her more than another minute or two. Jade? Couldn’t have warned her?? Maybe?? Unless…

Her form wavers again, another link snapping completely. _Fuck_ —

Mythra is dying.

Mythra is dying—which means somehow the resonance hasn’t _fully_ snapped, yet—Jade clings to the sensation of it fraying, clings to it as his mind spins.

He can’t even really describe what he does next. Honestly, he barely has the presence of mind to think about it.

A heart beats in his chest.

An ocean of ether is gathered around him.

Jade takes the resonance in his hands and he _pulls._

Some fucking how, Mythra stabilizes.

Mythra braces herself against the table Galea’s been working from, wheezing as she feels her body decide it’s _not_ going to break down into base ether, actually.

“Mythra…?” Galea asks, uncertain, clearly worried.

“What was that?” Hubert demands. “Why would you…?”

Mythra ignores them, instead assessing the resonance link that still flows between her core and the person she’s anchored to. Person, singular, no echoes of another resonance, another blade in the bleed. Jade’s ice hums in the back of her mind, a tight knot of emotions she cannot decipher but which are decidedly Jade’s and not Citan’s. The resonance is free of Citan’s influence, actually. Which means…

_Is Jade fucking driving her??_

Mythra’s head whips in Jade’s direction, in the direction of her driver, her core hiccupping with all her confusion.

“ _Jade,_ what the _fuck_ ,” she says, with feeling.

Jade’s vision clears, and his body settles. Other than the near blinding headache and the frankly quite unusual sensation of suddenly having a beating heart hosted inside his chest where previously there was only a core steadily delivering ether to his system, Jade feels… fine, actually. He feels alright. There’s no telling how long that will last, of course—Anna’s notes said it could be anywhere between minutes and weeks before any ill symptoms showed—but it’s a start.

And Mythra’s… alive.

That’s strange, actually. Being on the driver end of a resonance is quite different, it turns out. Mythra’s ether sings along the link towards him, along with all of her sharp confusion and concern. He’ll need to find her.

And also, get out of here, of course.

Rising to his feet, staggering only a little before he finds his balance, Jade considers the snow at his feet, and then the gathered, gaping crowd. Hm. They sure all just saw that, didn’t they.

Well, that’s their problem. Not his.

“Consider this my resignation,” he tells them all, with a bright, unburdened smile.

No one moves to stop him.

“Mythra what happened?” Galea demands, hands gripping Mythra’s shoulders. “What are—”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Mythra insists, pushing her mother off because she doesn’t have _time_ for that.

“Fine??” Hubert repeats, incredulous. “Mythra I _felt_ that resonance snap, how are you still standing?”

“Jade’s driving me,” Mythra answers, without really thinking about it. “Somehow. It’s—” She can’t really take her eyes away from his general direction, still feeling that ether flooding the base, _knowing_ now that he’s dead center of it. “I have to find him,” she says, because that’s all that matters. She can _feel_ he’s fine, but she still needs to see it before she’s going to be even a little bit settled, a little less anxious.

“ _Jade_?” Flynn repeats, surprised. “But that’s… What about—”

“Citan’s dead,” Mythra says.

Galea’s hands fly to her mouth. Whether that’s pride or surprise on her face, Mythra can’t tell anymore. “Architect, he did it,” she whispers.

“Citan’s what,” Flynn says, deadpan.

“He was _supposed_ to warn me,” Mythra complains, sharp. She starts moving towards the door. It’s been too many seconds and she hasn’t seen her driver yet. ( _It’s weird to think of him as that, but it’s intrusive, and significantly more comfortable than the last driver she had._ ) “I have to find him, make sure he’s—oh.” She stops at the doorway. Turns to Galea. “Go ahead and tell everyone the truth, alright? No point keeping it a secret anymore. Also pack your things, we’re going to get out of here as soon as me and Jade get back.”

“I- okay,” Galea answers, stunned, but Mythra is past the point of caring. She trusts Galea to see it done.

“Tell us what— _Galea,_ ” she hears Hubert as she makes her way to the front door of the labs. Mythra’s glad it isn’t her problem.

Worry thrums in her veins, and under that, Jade’s… it’s hard to say what it is. Determination? That feels clear and sharp but it’s a little disjointed, so even though the resonance is stable Mythra definitely has a handful of questions about how Jade’s _actually doing,_ right now. It’s also kind of overwhelming, to feel the emotion bleed so free of Citan’s oppressive apathy. Freeing, but there’s _so much of it,_ so clean and unburdened. Mythra borrows Jade’s determination and sharpens it, bolsters it with her own…

She can feel where he is, clear as a signal. Of course she has to navigate out of the labs, and then the hallways between the labs and the outside before she can even get to the rest of the base, but it’s fine, she’s done this walk a million times, it’s over in seconds. She opens the outside door—

—and is confronted with a faceful of snow.

Uh.

It’s not _too_ bad over here, at least. She can’t fucking see the rest of the base, though, through this blizzard. And that’s, uh.

“Jade???” Mythra says, not that she expects him to answer or even hear her. Sometimes you just need to shout your friend-who-is-now-driving-you-somehow’s name into the fucking blizzard raging before you because you’re just at that point of being unable to process what is going on.

At least the snow clears a polite path in front of her when she blasts it with light. Mythra tries not to think about how cold it is and sets off.

The first thing Galea does after Mythra leaves is get between Hubert and Flynn and the door. It’s not going to _stop_ them if they actually try and force past her, but it should give her time enough to perhaps slip out and lock them in here, if she has to.

“Before I answer any questions,” Galea says, carefully. “I need to know whether or not I can trust you two.”

“Galea I’m on your side wholeheartedly and if I must keep Flynn from interfering, I will,” Hubert says, smoothly.

“ _Hubert_ ,” Flynn… not-quite scolds, but his tone is definitely somewhere between reproachful and surprised.

“Of course, I know my driver,” Hubert continues. “And I know that he’s not exactly keen about keeping the lot of you locked in here, so there shouldn’t be an issue. Stop lollygagging and go pack your things.”

Galea thinks she can allow thirty more seconds for Flynn to speak his piece, which he looks like he wants to. She levels her gaze at him, a silent demand for him to go ahead and get it over with.

“It’s just,” Flynn begins, as Hubert preemptively sighs. “If Citan really is dead, and Jade isn’t… then…” He hesitates for a minute there, but doesn’t seem to want to say it. Galea can’t blame him. It’s not an easy thing to discuss, especially not named the way it is.

“Then Jade did exactly what a blade would need to do, in that situation,” Hubert finishes, which isn’t any more explicit, but at least pushes his driver along into getting to his next thought.

“That means he killed Citan,” Flynn says.

“And?” Hubert says, before Galea can open her mouth. She lets him at it, though, he obviously knows Flynn better than she does. “What do you want us to do about that?”

“It’s just…”

“Should we arrest Jade?” Hubert asks. “You know what the law does with flesh eaters, right?”

Flynn sighs. “Fair point,” he agrees.

Galea isn’t sure she wants to know, but she can imagine. No reason to give a blade—even if they aren’t exactly one, anymore—a fair trial, right?

“Besides,” she adds, vindictive. “Citan murdered two blades, and I didn’t see anyone try to arrest _him._ ”

“No one has proof of that,” Flynn says. Galea raises her eyebrows. Flynn flinches. “Sorry, no, you’re right. I shouldn’t… right now. I’m sure you have plenty of proof that you just couldn’t take to anyone. Jade, too.”

( _Galea thinks of how certain Jade seemed that Citan would kill him if he found out Mythra remembered. She wonders how many other secrets Jade was forced to keep, and her stomach churns._ )

“Anyway.” Flynn shakes his head. “Hubert is right, you should start packing. The two of us will see about gathering some rations for you, for the road. It would be unwise to help you out of here but leave you unprepared for the trip afterwards.”

“Oh,” Galea says. She’d be worried about letting them out, afraid they’ll tattle, but they definitely seem like they want to help, and the little she knows about Flynn makes her certain he’s a terrible liar. If he was going to cause trouble, he would do it himself. “That’s kind of you.”

“Least we can do,” Flynn insists.

“Try and pin Jade down so he doesn’t leave before we get back,” Hubert adds, as Galea lets them pass. “I don’t trust him or Mythra to not push through whatever ill-health they have, and I know now is not exactly the time where he would have another option, but it seems absurd to not at least _see_ if I can heal him.”

Aw, it’s sweet that he cares. “I’ll see what I can do,” Galea promises.

Once they’re gone, she turns to the rest of the labs to tell her family the good news.

Jade’s fine, actually. He’s doing just fine. Still rolling the dice about how long that’s going to last, but he shelves that problem for later. He will simply hold it together until they get out of here. He doesn’t have another option. And it’s not proving _difficult._ Holding himself together, that is. Again, he feels fine.

He just needs to find Mythra. The still-standing resonance implies she’s okay, but he’d appreciate being able to see her with his own eyes to confirm it. At least her constantly tugging on the resonance for his attention gives him a pretty good idea of where she is. And no one is giving him any trouble—something of a surprise, after the stunt he pulled, but he supposes as likely as people are to be mad with him, they are equally as likely as to not want to approach the new flesh eater who is still covered in blood and gripping his spear, just in case.

Or the snow. The snow might be doing it, too. It’s not giving _Jade_ any trouble traversing, of course, but everyone else he’s seen hasn’t been so lucky. He’s also passed several doors that he can’t imagine anyone’s going to get open any time soon, at least not without the help of another ice blade. Or maybe a determined fire blade. Either way: convenient.

And laughably over the top, as far as escape attempts go. If he’d known he could have done this, he would have stressed significantly less…

Oh well.

Citan is dead, and they’re getting out of here.

It doesn’t entirely feel real, though. Isn’t that funny? Citan is dead and yet a part of Jade keeps running his fingers over the resonance in his mind, just to feel Citan’s absence, _just_ to make sure. Like perhaps Citan isn’t actually dead, even though Jade’s arms still ache from the force of the killing blow, even though the heart beating steadily, merrily in Jade’s chest make it hard to deny the fact that Citan is _very_ dead. But still. It’s almost like a dream.

Jade just… needs to find Mythra.

He needs to find Mythra, and—actually. Jade pauses, reassessing. What he really needs to do is pack his things, because he has a few belongings he would rather not leave behind, never mind the stash of money he’s been squirreling away for years. His room isn’t far from here, and based on how much closer she gets each time she tugs the resonance, Mythra is coming his way, anyway. He might as well let her meet him while he packs.

And… maybe gets a change of clothes.

The snow is about up to his ankles around him—inside, at least; it’s much worse outside—which Jade barely notices, the snow parting around his feet as he walks without him even having to think about it. He supposes he should be concerned about it. It being the fact it’s snowing indoors. Doubtlessly his own fault, but at the moment it’s doing more help than harm, so he shelves that to worry about later, too.

It’s not like the snow is bothering him. Just the lack of control he appears to have on it.

Anyway, Mythra. No. Packing. And maybe a change of clothes, if there’s time. There should be time, the blizzard bought plenty. Or at least enough for him to change into something that _isn’t_ covered in Citan’s blood.

It’s still snowing when he enters his room. That’s fine. What few belongings he cares about aren’t going to mind the snow. A few gifts from Galea and the rest of them, including the empty mug of coffee Klaus handed him yesterday that he never got around to returning and one horrendously awful book Anna got him that he’s fond of even if he doesn’t anticipate reading it, ever. He takes a handful of other books off his shelf, including the one in which his notes are tucked. Not that he _needs_ the notes, anymore, but he packs them into the bottom of his bag, anyway, right next to the money. His clothes can go on top.

Right, he was going to change.

He’s about halfway through putting a clean shirt on when Mythra throws the door open.

“ _Jade_??” she asks, voiced pitched several octaves higher than normal with her worry. She lets out a sigh of relief once she sees him—cute that she’s worried, but also unnecessary. Jade’s fine. And it’s weird, frankly, to be on the driver end of the blade-fretting-about-driver’s-safety thing. He almost wishes Mythra wouldn’t, though her concern beats in his veins with the same steady pounding as his new heart does.

More importantly, though: “Mythra, what have I said about knocking?”

“I _did_ knock, asshole, you didn’t answer!”

Oh. Hm. Jade certainly doesn’t remember hearing her knock.

“Are you- are you _okay_?” Mythra asks, before Jade can even say anything more. Again, weird, to feel the full force of her worry, unburdened by Citan’s sea of apathy, prone to drown any emotion that had to swim across it.

Jade opens his mouth, but again Mythra beats him to it. That’s fine, it appears he needs the mental energy to finish getting dressed.

“You were supposed to _warn_ me before doing that!” Mythra complains, but her anger isn’t sharp at all, not compared to the edge of her concern. “We had plans, you know!? That’s—you didn’t—”

“Weren’t you saying I needed to be more spontaneous?” Jade says, in the gap left by her stammering.

Mythra’s anger gets a little sharper with that, as to be expected. “Not about _this!_ ” Worry still wins out, though, and she takes a cautious step towards Jade, clearly weighing every inch of him with her eyes, as if she could simply study answers about his well-being out of his face. Jade wishes her luck. “Are you… you’re okay, right? He didn’t try and…” She hesitates, not wanting to say it. “You know… did he?”

Jade presumes she’s worried about Citan having tried to kill him, and him being forced to react in self-defense.

“He didn’t,” he answers honestly, because she deserves that truth. “Honestly I don’t think he saw it coming.”

“Okay, cool, but why _now_?” Mythra demands.

“Hmm.”

Jade admits he isn’t so keen on admitting that he simply got so angry he snapped. Around so many _witnesses,_ no less! Mythra doesn’t need to know he acted so impulsively. And she _certainly_ doesn’t need to know he did it because Citan had insulted _her._ She’d never let him hear the end of it, if she knew.

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Jade asks, instead, as he pulls on his gloves, and then makes sure everything’s in order in his bag. “What’s done is done.”

“ _Jade._ ”

She clearly isn’t convinced. Unfortunate.

He shoulders his bag and steps towards the door, but Mythra’s doing a rather fine job of blocking it. He wonders how long she’s willing to stand ankle-deep in that snow. It’s not like she’s dressed for the cold. She’s doing an incredible job of ignoring it, though.

“Are you… _okay_?” Mythra asks, again. How many times is she going to ask?

“Fine,” Jade answers, brightly. “As far as I can tell, at least so far, I haven’t completely ruined my health. In fact, I seem to have gotten a boost to my abilities.”

Hence the blizzard. He only wishes it were _intentional,_ and not a side-effect he didn’t ask for, even if it is helping.

“I didn’t mean physically,” Mythra snaps, then makes the face she always does when she regrets speaking before thinking. “I mean- it’s great. I’m glad you’re fine, actually. I don’t know what I’d do… if you weren’t…” Hastily she stops looking at him, rubs at her arms. Likely not from the cold, despite the circumstances.

And then she turns on her heel and nods towards the door, apparently not wanting to deal with anything like emotional vulnerability right now. Jade approves. They don’t really have time for it.

“Whatever, let’s just get out of here,” Mythra grumbles.

“Yes, let’s,” Jade agrees, and gently pushes past Mythra so he can lead the way. She’ll likely appreciate not having to trudge through the snow.

Things Jade was expecting when they arrived back at the labs? Certainly not Hubert standing with his weapons out amidst a pile of wrecked computers. If Jade had any more of his mind to spare for thinking about things that weren’t Adjusting To His New Body or Getting The Hell Out Of Here, he might have paid attention to the _“is that everything?” “I think so, yes”_ exchanged between an exasperated Hubert and a diligent Klaus, but all Jade properly processes are the guns still hot with ether in Hubert’s hands.

Jade’s spear comes to him in an instant. The falling snow gets a little harder, a little sharper. The temperature _must_ drop, but Jade doesn’t feel it—

He _does_ feel Mythra’s hand on his arm, though, tugging him back.

“Whoa, hey, wait a second,” Mythra says, and her concern nearly jolts Jade for how well he can feel it when the emotion bleed isn’t burdened by Citan’s presence. “I think- I think he’s on our side.”

“I am, in fact,” Hubert answers, annoyed. He does hold his hands up in a gesture of peace and dismiss his guns in a short burst of blue, though, leveling his gaze against Jade’s. “And before you freeze the room over, destroying the research was Klaus’ idea, not mine.”

“We can’t just _leave_ it here,” Klaus argues, and. Alright. He has a point.

“Jade, come on,” Mythra says, and, ah. He’s still holding his spear, isn’t he. “I think Hubert’s good. If he was gonna start shit he would have already, right?”

“Mythra’s right. We are not here to ‘start shit’,” Flynn agrees.

“We’re here to help you escape,” Hubert finishes, which is all fine and good, but.

How.

How long has Flynn been standing there?

Likely this whole time, of course. Hm. Jade’s not a fan of the fact he didn’t notice. He’s somewhat reassured by the fact that if Flynn _had_ been a threat, Mythra would have seen it even if Jade hadn’t, but still. Blades die, if they don’t pay attention. He has to pull it together.

( _Idly he thinks that it’s probably a good thing he managed to salvage the resonance with Mythra, because if he was meant to get the five of them out of the base alone while in_ this _condition, even with the blizzard raging outside, he…_

 _Well, best it didn’t come to that, really._ )

“Jade,” Mythra hisses, her voice low.

Oh, right. He dismisses his spear and does what he can to yank the ambient ether away from subzero temperatures. The snow appears keen to stick around, though, still happily falling as if the ceiling were clouds. Well, whatever. He doesn’t have the time or the energy right now to figure that out. Once they’re out of here, he can worry about it.

At least the snow in here is much gentler than the blizzard outside. His companions will surely survive.

Klaus has apparently decided now’s a safe time to approach, and he does. Jade tenses despite himself, but Klaus just grabs Mythra and pulls her into a bone-crushing hug. The fact she does not protest speaks to how much she missed him, Jade thinks. Klaus whispers something that Jade can’t hear, and Mythra responds with a quiet, guilty little: “Sorry, Dad…”

The warmth echoing in his core would be nice if he could feel it, Jade thinks. The guilt, he could do without. He tucks them both away, out of his own reach. Shelves the sensation of Mythra’s emotions hitting the wall of Whatever His Emotions Are Doing, to deal with later, then also shelves the fact he has no idea how to describe whatever it is he’s feeling, right now. Perhaps it’s something he should be concerned about, but it’s certainly something he can worry over _later._ There are more important tasks to handle, right now.

Mythra is busy, and they can spare another minute or two there, given that the blizzard has rendered most every soldier on base immobile for the time being. Jade should check on the others, make sure they’re ready to go. Instead his eyes drift to Flynn and Hubert—two enigmas in an equation he had mostly figured out.

Before he can question them, Hubert crosses his arms over his chest, then looks very pointedly at the snow falling from the ceiling. “I suppose the blizzard outside was your fault, then,” Hubert says, tone sharp. Jade’s heard worse. “It was infuriating to get through, for the record. But you’re welcome for the supplies, Galea said you didn’t have any.”

Jade takes his earlier assessment and reconsiders. A determined _water_ blade could apparently get through the blizzard just as well. He takes Hubert’s barbs with barely a blink.

“I was planning to get them on the way out,” he lies, because the fact he never managed to think that far ahead—having gotten stuck on the problem of getting Citan out of the picture—is frankly embarrassing and definitely will remain unspoken forever. “Thanks for saving me the trouble, I suppose.”

Maybe his tone is too sharp, or maybe it’s something in his gaze, but Flynn sighs.

“I understand if you don’t feel comfortable trusting us,” Flynn says. “But we _are_ on your side. It would be unjust to leave you here, so I would like to escort you out of the base, at the very least. Or further, if you would have us.”

“And what’s to say you won’t sell us out while we’re trying to leave?” Jade counters.

Flynn scowls like he hadn’t even considered the possibility. Hubert scoffs before his driver can answer.

“Come on, are you serious?” Hubert laughs. “Flynn? Tell a lie for longer than five minutes?”

Jade relents, there. He knows Flynn well enough to know Hubert’s right. Besides, if Jade remembers correctly, Flynn was… one of the ones who spoke out about the imprisonment of the Artificial Aegis crew, wasn’t he? Granted, he wasn’t one of the protestors who’d been _reassigned,_ but… Jade reaches for a thought, can’t find it. He can’t remember if anyone had told him to watch Flynn closely or if Flynn hadn’t been deemed even worth that much. Or maybe Jade _had_ been told but had simply discarded the thought. He doesn’t like that he can’t remember.

Regardless. More important things at hand.

Jade considers Hubert, still an enigma. Then again, Jade supposes _most_ blades have drivers worth supporting, agreeing with. Of course Hubert is here with Flynn.

“What’s that face for?” Hubert asks.

“Was I making a face?” Jade responds. Quite honestly he has no idea.

Hubert takes a breath like he’s considering his next words, then forcefully shoves his glasses back up his nose. “You know, the fact I don’t warrant an interrogation almost has me offended, Jade,” he says.

“Why would I need to interrogate you? Your motivations for helping us seem clear enough.”

“Do they?” Hubert almost seems surprised.

“Of course. Flynn wants to help, and you want to help Flynn. Like a good blade.”

Alarm flares in the emotion bleed from Mythra’s end. Hubert’s face scrunches up like it can’t decide to twist in horror or fury. Jade raises his eyebrows and watches, his new heart beating a little faster, slightly out of sync with the usual pulse of his ether. He’s not a fan of that.

“I- don’t even know where to begin, with that,” Hubert says, flustered, sharp. “But it’s not.” He huffs. “I’m here because, for some _Architect forsaken reason,_ I like you, Jade. Maybe we’re not friends, exactly, but—Here I am. And if Flynn wanted to be elsewhere, I wouldn’t stop him, unless he was trying to stop you.”

Jade’s eyebrows move a little higher, his smile a little wider. “Really, now?” he asks.

Hubert inhales sharply and opens his mouth to speak, but doesn’t get a chance before Galea enters the room, talking as she does.

“Oh! Mythra, Jade!” Bag slung over her shoulder, Galea beelines towards Mythra. Jade steps out of the way, giving Galea the space to wrap her daughter in a hug. “It’s good to see you—I know, I know, we’re in a hurry,” she relents, letting go of Mythra. What _might_ be longing from Mythra’s end smacks into that wall of Whatever The Fuck Jade is feeling. He ignores it. “So I packed your bag, Mythra. And we’re just waiting on Myyah…?” she raises her voice, calls back into the labs.

It’s not Myyah who responds, but Anna. “I’m _trying_ , okay!? She’s—oh fuck did you say Jade was here hold on hold on.” And then Anna is _running_ out to greet them, slamming a hand against the wall to bring herself to a stop. She’s smiling bright, eyes full of a fire Jade hasn’t seen in her since he doesn’t remember when. “Galea and/or Klaus can you go wrangle Myyah into not bringing her entire room with her, Jade I need you for something.”

“She’s not going to listen to us,” Klaus argues, but Anna isn’t listening to him.

“What for?” Jade asks.

“Just come here a sec I promise it’ll be quick,” Anna says, and then stops, considering the damage Hubert has done to most of the equipment. “…hey Hubert is there a computer in these labs you _haven’t_ destroyed.”

“Why do you need it?” Hubert asks.

“Architect okay I guess no one cares whether or not Jade fucked himself over by eating Citan’s heart.”

Jade can’t decide if he wants to say he didn’t eat it (because he didn’t) or if he wants to say it tasted awful (presumably it would have, given: Citan) but decides to do neither for the sake of time, and says: “I would like to know that, thank you.”

“How would she—” Hubert begins, but Jade doesn’t care.

“Computer, Hubert?”

Flynn, helpful little bastard, points in the direction of—ah, that was where Galea had been running tests on Mythra these past few months, right? That would make sense. Jade heads that way, Anna beating him only because she’s closer. Only once Jade’s in the room and sitting as Anna instructed does he realize Mythra followed him.

“What?” Mythra asks, when she sees Jade looking at her. “I’m curious too.” Her casual tone could almost hide how worried she is, if only Jade couldn’t feel said worry in the emotion bleed.

“Hey, we all are,” Anna tells her, bright. She doesn’t seem to mind Mythra leaning casually-but-not-casually-at-all against the wall by the doorframe, busying herself with booting computers and digging out wires. Finally she turns to Jade, then hesitates, and laughs. “I’ll need to see your core crystal.”

“Ah, yes, I suppose you would,” Jade agrees, already unbuttoning first his coat then his shirt enough to expose his core crystal.

Anna raises her eyebrows when she sees it, not that she hesitates to attach a wire to it even as she grumbles, good-natured: “Welp, lost that bet.”

There’s a gentle tug on his ether—data sent to the computer, Jade’s sure. He doesn’t even ask if Anna and her friends were betting on the color of his ether. Of course they were. So instead, as they wait for the results of whatever test Anna is running, he teases: “How do you know the color isn’t new?”

“Flesh eater core crystals don’t get that red unless you were red to begin with,” Anna answers, distracted, watching the numbers fill the screen. Then she reconsiders, and actually looks towards Jade. “I mean, unless you were pink, maybe?” she says. “Were you pink, Jade?”

Jade keeps his face perfectly neutral though he very desperately wants to smile. It’s the clearest emotion he’s felt in the past half hour, actually. Thanks, Anna.

“He’s always been red,” Mythra rats him out from the corner, though. Jade turns to her with mock offense, feigning putting a hand to his core and everything—as well as he can without dislodging the wire, anyway.

“Mythra I cannot believe you’d betray me like this.”

“Oh shut up.”

“There we are,” Anna says, having ignored the two blades in the room again in favor of squinting at the computer screen. Not even looking at Jade, she hums and yanks the wire to disconnect it. Jade blinks a few times, stunned—it didn’t _hurt,_ exactly, but it definitely sent a jarring _something_ through his ether. He doesn’t shudder, but it does take him a moment before he can move to begin rebuttoning his shirt and coat.

“Well?” Mythra asks, in Anna’s silence.

“The numbers look good,” Anna says, quiet, a little distracted. “Some of the best I’ve ever seen, actually. Ether output’s really high right now, which tracks, but the… I mean it’s…” She has one hand bracing her weight on the desk. The other hand fidgets, fingers cycling in and out of making a fist as Anna’s eyes narrow. “They’re good.” Her voice is tight, distracted. “I can’t, uh. Look I don’t. Can’t. Tell you why, exactly, they’re good, but. They’re good. He’s fine- he’ll- he’s gonna be fine.”

Jade would like something more concrete than that, but also doesn’t want to put Anna right out of commission before they escape, so he tucks the question away to ask later, if he can.

“How do you know so much about—” Mythra begins, but gets no further before Jade silences her with the sharpest look he has in his inventory. Mythra ducks her head down, embarrassed. Jade all but holds his breath, watching Anna. Anna’s gone very… very still.

“We don’t really have time to dawdle much longer if we want to make an easy escape,” Jade says, crisply, and gets to his feet. “You can always tell us later, Anna. We should focus on getting out of here, for right now.”

It does the trick. “Oh, right, yeah!” Anna’s attention snaps towards him, her smile still shaky, but her eyes bright. “Let me, uh. Let me write these down real quick, maybe I can- tell you later. What’s. Yeah just hold on.”

Jade’s curious enough not to discourage her, seeing as it was her idea, and she doesn’t seem to be having any trouble writing the numbers down.

Within the next ten minutes, they’re leaving the labs, and then the rest of the base.

There really isn’t any opposition.

What few soldiers managed to dig themselves out of the snow and also decided they were stupid enough to face the strongest blade on the base, despite the raging blizzard, were happily put out of commission by Mythra, who burned with delight all the while.

Jade was happy to let her at it. His attention was focused on keeping the worst of the blizzard away from his companions, anyway.

( _Letting Hubert and Flynn tag along proved useful, as well—it meant Jade had to spend less time herding scientists, and could devote more attention to said blizzard._ )

Within the hour, they’re out of the base, and on the road.

It takes them a few days, but they arrive at the nearest town—the nearest town _not_ crawling with Tethe’allan military, anyway—in one piece. The only complaint Jade has is that, despite his best efforts, it’s still snowing in the two-foot radius surrounding him. He supposes as far as side-effects go, this is really only an annoyance, but even still. A dark corner of his mind wonders how long he can keep producing ether like this. More openly he dreads what exactly the local townsfolk are going to think.

“Still snowing, huh,” Mythra asks, quiet, but her smile sharp as she looks up at him. They hang towards the back of the group as they walk. Everyone else here is more than capable enough to lead themselves.

Jade breathes very carefully, then reaches up and flicks snow off of his shoulder. “You know, I’m starting to enjoy it,” he says. His smile may be unbothered, and his tone perfectly casual, but he doesn’t bother hiding his annoyance from the emotion bleed. There’s no point to hide anything from the emotion bleed, anymore. Mythra’d see right through him, anyway.

“Jade,” she says, somewhere between disapproving and worried.

Jade just raises his eyebrows at her, silently asking if she really thinks it’d still be snowing if he knew how to stop it, which he knows is why she was bothering him to begin with. She scowls, relenting, and then very abruptly stops in her tracks, eyes scanning the intersection they’re at.

“Mythra?” Jade asks, more confused than concerned. She doesn’t feel alarmed. Just intent on something.

“Hold on, hold on,” Mythra says, loud enough that the rest of their companions slow to consider her as well. “Foresight’s…” She doesn’t finish the sentence, just takes a sharp turn down the right path instead of heading straight like they were. “This way.”

Well, there’s no arguing with Foresight, is there? Jade sighs and shakes his head, but follows after his blade. The rest of them will follow.

Foresight leads Mythra to a tavern, shoved away in a corner, like someone would rather forget it exists, and it’s run down enough to suggest perhaps it has been forgotten. Of course there are people and conversation inside, and for all that it seems stashed away it does not necessarily seem _untoward_ in any fashion. In fact, though the ambient ether sings of relatively few patrons, it also sings as if all of those patrons are blades. Jade takes that as a good sign.

“Here, really?” Klaus asks. “Mythra are you—”

“Positive,” Mythra answers, already climbing the front steps to shove the door open and announce themselves.

Well, Jade’s gambled a lot in these past few days. What’s one more?

“Be with you in a sec!” the bartender calls to the lot of them, and not a moment later he double-takes and looks them over again, properly taking stock of the eight of them. His eyes linger on Jade a moment longer than is comfortable ( _likely the snow’s fault, unfortunately,_ ) and then his attention swings towards… Is that Anna he’s staring at, like he’s just been reunited with an old friend, or maybe seen a ghost rise out of a grave? Maybe it’s Hubert, that’d make marginally more sense—what with Hubert being a blade, and all.

The bartender immediately puts down whatever he was doing and slides around the bar to greet them.

“Come in, come in,” he says, waving them all further into the establishment. Jade elects to stay put as everyone else moves, just so he snows by the doorway. It’s evaporating fast enough it’s barely a nuisance on that front anymore, but Jade still imagines that the bartender would prefer to sweep the lot of it out the door if possible.

“Are you… really sure about this, Mythra?” Galea asks, voice low.

“ _He’s_ a blade, that’s enough to get my vote. Besides, you guys are the only humans here. Those seem like good odds to me,” Mythra counters. “And has Foresight ever been wrong before?”

Galea scowls, just as Hubert hisses: “Maybe the _less_ we say, the better.”

“No, I’m pretty sure we can trust him,” Anna says, loud and bright. She’s staring at the bartender like she’s met him before but can’t quite place where. Interesting.

Especially considering said bartender cannot seem to take his eyes off of Anna for long, and gravitates more towards her than anyone else, despite Mythra being the immediate head of the pack, right now. “I know I’ve only got my word for you to believe, but if the lot of you need to lay low, I can do that,” the bartender promises, his smile open. “Name’s Malik, by the way.” He’s close enough that Jade can see his core crystal now, proudly on display by both his open coat and partially unbuttoned shirt. He’s also close enough that Jade notes his ether tastes… wrong, somehow. Between that and the lack of humans, Jade wonders; another flesh eater, maybe?

(“ _Another”, he thinks, so easily, and that’s maybe the strangest part of all. That he’s already getting used to it, even though he spends more time than he doesn’t double checking just to make sure Citan’s not poisoning his resonance._ )

“Have we met before?” Anna asks, and Jade discards his previous thought to watch Malik’s reaction.

“Don’t think so,” Malik answers, but that’s the face of a liar. There’s too much recognition in his eyes. _Interesting._ He laughs and shakes his head though, makes a show of dusting his hands off. “Hah, where are my manners! Sit down, make yourselves comfortable, I’ll get you some drinks and food, we can talk shop afterwards—or you can head on your way.” He smiles at them all, then ducks back into the kitchen.

Anna sits at a table large enough for all eight of them right away, looking more comfortable than Jade thinks he’s ever seen her. Myyah of course is quick to follow her lead. Mythra hesitates, but the look she sends Jade is one of weighing options and outcomes, not one of uncertainty. She makes up her mind and sits down, too, then looks at her parents expectantly. Galea shrugs. Klaus sighs. They sit down. Flynn does without any fuss, and Hubert gives all the fuss, of course.

“What,” Hubert asks, sharp, “aren’t you going to sit down too, Jade?”

Jade weighs his options. Mythra looks at him like she expects him to stay put, maybe even advises it. How much of the next few minutes did she see, with Foresight? Or rather, how much is she pushing it ahead for their sake, right now? Jade’s saved from making a decision by Malik returning with another man—another blade—in tow.

“This here’s Minoth, he’ll get you set up,” Malik introduces. “I’ll be just a moment,” he says, making eye-contact with Jade. Hmm. Jade’s not sure how he feels about that, but he’s starting to understand Mythra’s earlier look.

He turns to Mythra. She flashes him an entirely unsubtle thumbs-up. Jade sighs, but chooses to trust her judgement.

“Hey, Malik wait it’s driving me bonkers,” Anna calls, as Malik starts to pass her. “I swear I remember you from somewhere, did we—”

“Don’t worry about it, okay, Anna?” Malik says, and oh. Anna definitely did not tell him her name. That’s intriguing. So is the familiar, almost gentle tone he just took with her. Intriguing indeed. “Or—we’ll talk later, got it? Just give me one second.”

And before Anna can say any more, Malik’s stopped in front of Jade. He gestures outside.

“A word?” he asks.

Again, Jade’s chosen to trust Mythra’s judgement, here. So, fine.

“If we must,” Jade says. ( _He may trust Mythra’s judgement, but that doesn’t mean he has to enjoy this._ )

Malik seems to sigh in relief, then leads Jade right outside. There’s a patio of a sort of raised wood in front of the door, so Malik just ducks to the right of his tavern and hangs out there—out of earshot of those inside so long as they’re all talking (and they are), but not in the middle of the street, either. And also not anywhere as sketchy as the alleyway, which Jade would have refused outright, regardless of trusting Mythra’s judgement. Jade follows as far as he must, though he doesn’t exactly turn to face Malik, preferring to keep watch on the road so he can keep an eye on anyone who might approach. The street is empty, though. Some comfort.

“You’re a flesh eater, right?” Malik asks, voice low. Jade appreciates the attempt at secrecy, but still sends Malik a look, sidelong. He really decided to open on that, did he? And he expected Jade to answer?

Malik sighs.

“Look, so am I,” he says, and taps at his own core crystal. Jade turns his attention enough to really consider it. Lavender, tainted with the color of blood, just like Anna’s notes described. Malik really must have guts if he’s displaying it so proudly.

Jade pulls his eyes upward to meet Malik’s, raises his eyebrows, a silent request for Malik to continue with whatever the fuck he’s on about.

Malik holds up his hands in a gesture peace. “I don’t need to know the details,” he insists. “It’s not my business. We all have our reasons, and I don’t need to know yours. I’m only bringing it up because…” He trails off, but the meaningful glance he gives to the snow accumulating on Jade’s shoulders speaks volumes.

Jade sighs. “You wouldn’t happen to know if this is normal for flesh eaters, would you?” he asks, just so he can be the one to bring it up, instead of Malik.

“Fairly normal, even for blades,” Malik answers.

“And yet I’m certain I’ve never accidentally _snowed,_ before, certainly not without being able to make it stop,” Jade snaps. He’s just out of patience for it. Putting up with his friends politely not mentioning it even though it’s not like no one noticed was bad enough, now he has to take shit from a blade he doesn’t know, and he’s not going to. He’s going to get his answer, full stop, and just he can’t afford to be picky about where he’s getting said answer from doesn’t mean he has to be _nice._

( _Concern flares from Mythra; Jade ignores it, but doesn’t stifle it or the signals of annoyance that he’s sending back to her. He doesn’t have the energy to stifle the emotion bleed anymore. Nor does he like how stifling it makes him feel._ )

Malik sighs again. “Look, how long has this been happening? Since you transformed?”

“Three days,” Jade answers, and lets Malik piece together the rest if he so wishes.

“Well,” Malik says, making the exact expression to make Jade think he’s only just refraining from letting out a low whistle or some other obnoxious expression of surprise. “It’s still not unusual,” Malik insists, his tone still on the gentle side of business. “In fact, it’s pretty common in flesh eaters who had to make the transformation under extreme duress.”

Jade is struck with the uncomfortable feeling that Malik knows nearly everything about him, despite the conversation having only started a few minutes ago. He doesn’t like it.

“Anyway, enough of my rambling,” Malik laughs. “Difficulty with ether control is also pretty common in flesh eaters, one way or another. Our bodies don’t handle it the same way they used to, so there’s… fluctuations… complications…” He rolls his hand through the air a few times over, as if pantomiming a list that goes on and on.

“Is there a point to this?” Jade interrupts, sliding his glasses back up his nose.

“Ah,” Malik says. He looks Jade over, then holds out his hand. “Humor me?”

Jade stares for a long moment, not sure what Malik’s motives are, too annoyed—too _exhausted_ —to even speculate or joke about them. He would like to get his ether back under control, though, and he’s not prideful enough to refuse help. So, fine. He takes Malik’s hand.

He’s _about_ to ask why it’s necessary when he feels Malik probe at his ether and, of course, it would be that. Ether transfers go a little smoother with physical contact. Jade knew that.

“Keep humoring me, alright?” Malik says. “Close your eyes. Take a breath.”

Jade absolutely refuses to do the former, but Malik doesn’t need to know that. He does breathe, though, slow and deliberate, having a good guess at what Malik’s getting at, though he doesn’t see the point. For all of the careful breathing and attempts at simply _feeling_ his own ether and yanking back into shape that he’s done up until this point, he’s barely made a difference. Still. He’s not quite as stubborn as Mythra. He’ll try it. He’ll humor Malik. What will it hurt? What will it cost him? He can afford a few wasted minutes.

“Alright,” Malik continues, as Jade breathes. “Try and sync the rate of your ether flow to mine.”

“Yours is awfully slow,” Jade remarks, as he feels it out. Certainly slower than normal. A flesh eater thing, perhaps? But then why is it so much slower than Jade’s own?

Malik laughs, soft, a little bitter. “Yeah, I know. It’s been like that for a while. But it’s not like it’ll kill you if yours runs that slow for a few minutes. It should help, I promise.”

Alright. Fine. Jade supposes he sees the logic in it.

He doesn’t close his eyes, but he breathes, focuses in slowing the pulse of his ether down to match Malik’s, or at least come closer to it. His stolen heart seems to slow, too, which each deliberate breath. Malik’s grip on his hand is firm, but not so tight that Jade couldn’t break free if he wanted to. He doesn’t think about that, though. Instead Jade watches the empty street, wary, but it really is empty, save for the stray cat that wanders by. The bitter cold of early spring means any people outside are only out on errands, and it seems no errands will take anyone down this road. There’s the usual flow of town life back on the main street, distant noises, not nearly as loud as the chatter inside. Klaus says something, Anna laughs. Hubert says something, Anna laughs harder. Jade lets the sound wash over him, background noise as his pulse syncs with Malik’s

It’s… nice, actually. A calm that Jade didn’t even realize he could hit. He pays proper attention to the way Mythra’s concern fills the emotion bleed, concern that edges into relief, and—something bigger, deeper, that Jade can’t quite define. Fondness, maybe? He isn’t sure. But it’s nice, too.

…it’s stopped snowing.

“There you are,” Malik says, and lets go of Jade’s hand. Jade carefully rakes snow out of his own hair while Malik keeps speaking. “Give it a few weeks, you’ll be used to the way your body handles ether now, and it should stop happening.”

“Thank you,” Jade says, because he hasn’t forgotten his manners. Jade wonders if he can do this with Mythra, instead of Malik, should his ether decide to start acting up again. He reasons it’s worth a try. Also despite himself, he wonders if Malik has a more concrete explanation as to why that happened to begin with. Is it common for flesh eaters to overproduce ether? But then, Malik’s languidly slow pulse doesn’t suggest he’s capable of producing much ether at all, let alone _over_ producing it.

He has a lot of questions he wants to ask Malik about flesh eaters, actually. They can all wait, though.

There’s another question that can’t.

“Since I have you out here, can I ask a question?” Jade asks. Without waiting for a response, he fixes his face with the smile Mythra calls cruel but Jade thinks of as simply knowing. “It’s about Anna. You know her, don’t you?”

Malik hesitates a second too long. “I can’t say I understand how you got that impression,” he says.

“You called her by name despite her not having introduced herself,” Jade counters, bright. He feels a little more at ease, now that he’s not snowing all over the place.

“I think you imagined that,” Malik says.

So they’re playing that game, are they?

Jade shrugs, nonchalant. “Fine, but rest assured it won’t be a secret you can keep for more than a week, believe me. Even a week might be pushing it. My friends are all very perceptive. And _Anna_ certainly seemed like she recognized you.”

“Oh, you intend on staying that long?” Malik asks, instead of taking the bait. Clever move.

“You seemed to have every desire for us to. Won’t it be good for business?”

Malik hesitates, crossing his arms over his chest. He sends Jade a look sidelong, contemplative, but also a little… offended, perhaps. “It’s not about the money,” he says, then sighs, just slightly. “Listen. The lot of you certainly aren’t the first group I’ve seen running away from something. If you guys need a place to stay, you have it here.”

“And what exactly gave you the impression we were running from something?” Jade asks.

Malik raises his eyebrows like what _didn’t_ give him that impression, which is fair, but Jade’s smile doesn’t crack. It’s held up under worse accusations than this.

“My offer still stands,” Malik says.

“As does my question,” Jade counters. “If it were anything else, I might let it go, but Anna’s memories have been a curious thing for as long as I’ve known her. We’re all quite curious to know why she seems to remember the lives of another woman entirely, you know.”

Malik flinches, ever-so-slightly.

( _The thing is: this is only the second time Anna has shown this much recognition for him. Usually she doesn’t remember at all. And this half-recognition makes him nervous._

 _He knows there are some things she wishes to forget. Does he dare remind her of them?_ )

“If you know her, or anything about her, I’ll admit it might convince my friends to trust you without any fuss,” Jade adds. “Unless… there’s a reason you don’t want her to remember you.” If his tone gets a little dark, that’s on purpose. “Something unsavory in your past with her, perhaps.”

It gets a laugh out of Malik, a shake of his head. “Architect, no,” he says. “We were friends—in a handful of her previous lifetimes, actually.”

Jade’s eyebrows raise at _lifetimes, plural._

“And it…” Malik stops mid-sentence. “Well, I guess I should explain to everyone, not just you. Come on.” He nods back towards the entrance of his tavern. “I’ll explain, and then we can hash out the rest of the details.”

“Sounds good to me,” Jade agrees, and follows Malik back inside.

Jade runs his hands over the broken resonance, again, just to feel it, just to feel Citan’s absence. It’s freeing, but it’s also like a missing limb. He’s thought about asking Malik if this is the same for all flesh eaters, this business with missing their drivers—the one thing blades are not meant to live without and yet here they are—ask if this is normal, or if it’s just him, but he hasn’t had the stomach for it. Besides, he’s been too busy asking Malik more important questions, trying to gauge what complications he should expect.

Malik seems pretty sure that Jade got a lucky draw of the cards. Jade still hates that he had to gamble at all, but supposes he’s thankful.

( _He just wishes his core would register that Citan is well and truly dead_

 _Wishes he’d stop reflexively listening for a man who cannot hurt him again_ )

Jade’s currently writing down all the things Malik has told him, just so he won’t forget, just to give his hands something to _do._ They’ve been here three days and Jade is steadily learning that there is nothing more he hates than being idle or _bored,_ but there really isn’t much for Jade to do while the rest of his companions get settled.

Oh he can talk to them, of course, enjoy their company. And that’s fine. Jade’s grateful for that.

But without a specific task Jade finds himself restless, and since he’s already counted the money he stole and budgeted it accordingly five times over for every possible contingency plan he can think of, well. Here he is. Writing down facts Malik has probably committed to memory. At least it makes sense to have his own record of things, Jade thinks. Information he can keep should he ever part ways with Malik—and really, there’s no reason to assume he will stay here for the rest of forever.

He keeps writing, sitting on his bed in his and Mythra’s shared room, for lack of a desk to write at and a need to be alone for a while keeping him upstairs instead of down with the rest. He writes, and he does not think about Citan. Definitely not.

A knock on the door. Jade would pretend he didn’t hear if the resonance tied to his core didn’t sing with Mythra’s proximity.

( _At least Mythra’s here. An ease to the ache, in some way._

 _Jade thinks he appreciates the noise in his head, rather than the alternative, but it’s hard to say._ )

“Come in,” Jade calls, and Mythra doesn’t even hesitate before pushing the door open.

“Hey,” Mythra says, warm fondness bubbling up in the emotion bleed when she sees him. Ridiculous, Jade thinks, but welcome. He doesn’t exactly _smile_ back at her, but there’s definitely something shining in his eyes.

She opens her mouth, then seems to reconsider what she was going to say entirely. “You know if you’re going to write on every scrap paper you can find, shouldn’t you just, I dunno, get yourself a diary?” she asks. “I mean, you mentioned wanting one, right.”

Jade’s mood sours, just a little. “Hmm,” he says.

“That sounds like Jade for ‘you’re right Mythra, that _would_ be a good idea, I should listen to you more often’!” Mythra insists, bright. Jade rolls his eyes, but that doesn’t stop the treacherous fondness from bubbling up in his core.

( _He’s beginning to understand what Mythra meant, when she said that the difference in the emotion bleed with and without Citan is like night and day. The emotion bleed when it’s just Jade and Mythra is comfortable, light, something that settles into Jade’s core and sings like he imagines it was always supposed to._ )

Anyway, he can’t let her think she’s won, so:

“I believe all the stores are closed, right now,” Jade comments, turning his attention back to what he’s writing. The sun _is_ setting, after all.

Mythra scoffs, pride taken out of her sails immediately. “Well I didn’t mean right now, dumbass,” she spits, but Jade’s learned by now that ‘dumbass’ is just a glorified term of endearment, out of Mythra’s mouth.

“Did you need something?” Jade asks, to move the conversation along.

Mythra shrugs, exaggerated, plops herself down on the end of the bed. Not close enough to disturb him ( _for which he’s grateful_ ), but close enough that it makes the resonance sing in all the ways it never did when Citan was this close. Due to being on the driver end, Jade wonders. Or something else? Either way, Mythra pulls her legs up under her, gripping at her ankles with her hands, fidgeting just slightly. She shrugs again.

“Just wanted to check up on you,” Mythra says.

“You saw me all of an hour ago, and as far as I’m aware, there’s been no change.”

“Well I couldn’t ask what I wanted to ask when there were other people _listening_.”

“Oh?” Jade raises his eyebrows, curious, somewhat nervous. That can’t be good news.

“Just, you know.” Mythra shrugs again. “It’s… been a week. Are you… How are you holding up?”

When she looks at him, it’s like she’s afraid to, either for fear of how he’ll respond or for fear of showing all the earnest concern on her face, as if that isn’t currently saturating the emotion bleed enough that Jade would have a hard time _not_ noticing it. He’s touched that she’s worried, but.

Something in his spine twitches, discomfort roiling deeper in the sea of his core. Jade’s mouth goes very flat.

He doesn’t know how to answer.

“C’mooon,” Mythra ribs, gently. “If you don’t want anyone else knowing, I won’t tell. I’ve already proved I’m pretty good at keeping your secrets, huh?” Her smile is lopsided and proud.

Jade sighs, adjusts his glasses. “I suppose that’s true.”

“So? How are you holding up?”

“I don’t know,” Jade admits, throat tight. Saying it is like putting a mountain on his shoulders.

Mythra blinks at him. “You don’t… know?”

“No, I don’t,” Jade says. He knows how Mythra works, knows because she’s done it with him a million times before. She’ll talk, lay feelings out on the table, work through them as she speaks, spitball them with someone else—with Jade—to get a better feel of them. But Jade’s not like that. That’s not how he works.

So instead he just says he doesn’t know, and nothing more, turning it over in the back of his mind with the same hand that keeps touching the resonance just to make sure Citan is gone. He feels… fine. Tired. Disjointed. But okay. Things worked out, didn’t they? So he should be happy, and he supposes he is. If he thinks about it, there’s a very long list of things he’s grateful for, and a very short list of things he’s upset about. So he should be fine.

“I suppose I’m fine,” he tells Mythra.

She doesn’t look like she believes him. Honestly, he doesn’t believe himself, either.

But he doesn’t have words to put to the discontent he feels, the cloud that hangs over his head. Not having a word bothers him, but he’s quite certain Mythra won’t know it any better than he does, so instead:

“Everything worked out, after all,” Jade continues, in attempts to convince them both. “And I’m quite enjoying my freedom.” Again, reaching for a resonance snapped, a man who’s dead. Mythra feels him reaching this time, and instead Jade’s attention meets her ether, sharp and comforting, sitting in the back of his mind, flowing in his veins. He _does_ prefer things this way, really. “So,” he says, “I’m fine.”

“Jade…” Mythra begins, and he knows better about getting away with lying to her about his feelings—he supposes she must be feeling his unease as well as he is; the way the happiness doesn’t quite _stick_ in his core. She doesn’t press, though. Unlike her, but he won’t complain.

“I’m sure whatever this is will pass,” Jade tries to assure her, not certain why he feels the need to but giving into it, anyway. “Malik did say the first few weeks were… in his words, ‘weird’.”

“Yeah…” Mythra agrees. She doesn’t look at Jade, just leans forward a little, hands still on her ankles folded in front of her, arms bracing her weight. “It’s good that we ran into Malik, isn’t it. I’m happy. He can probably help you sort things out better than I can.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Jade scolds her, gentle. Mythra’s been an incredible rock to him in these past months, a friend he greatly appreciates, both for the support she’s offered him and the brightness she’s brought to his life. Jade doesn’t think he could possibly understate how much he appreciates having her to share his burden with, the bond forged by suffering the same load.

Of course, he’s not going to say all of that _aloud,_ but Mythra seems to get the picture, if the smile she sends him is any indication.

The smile, along with the gentle surprise floating up along the emotion bleed along with—that emotion that isn’t fondness, because it’s looser than fondness, looser and bigger and sharper, in a way. That’s the feeling that hits the emotion bleed from Mythra’s end, and it warms Jade’s core in ways he doesn’t know how to describe because he doesn’t know what it _is_. He scowls, ever so slightly, as he considers Mythra.

“What is that?” he asks, without elaborating, like a fool.

“What is what?” Mythra asks, confused, and that’s the least Jade deserves. A second later she seems to get it, though, and pitches her body slightly towards him. “I- do you mean the emotion bleed?”

“Yes, that.”

“I…” Mythra blinks several times. “Jade _please_ say you’re fucking with me.”

“I am not,” Jade says, steady, swiftly killing his annoyance. For all that he usually fucks with Mythra, he supposes her skepticism is warranted. But he isn’t fucking with her, not this time.

Mythra splutters. “It’s- it’s _love_ dumbass??”

“Oh.”

“It- literally how the- _Architect,”_ Mythra starts, and then stops there, as realization breaks across her face, horror dawning in her chest. She doesn’t say anything, but she stares at him, and Jade hums, not sure if she’s pitying him or if he enjoys the pity if she is. He hopes she doesn’t ask how he didn’t have a name for it before now. She shouldn’t need to. They both know the answer to that question.

( _They do, which means Mythra isn’t surprised when she thinks about it._

_But it makes her furious beyond ways she’s capable of articulating._

_Jade deserved much better than being stuck with a driver who couldn’t bother to give two shits about him._ )

“I’m gonna resurrect him just so I can kill him again,” Mythra spits.

“Please don’t even joke.”

Mythra sends a look at Jade, sharp and sad. Jade does _not_ reach for where Citan used to be, no, instead he runs his fingers over the taste of love underpinning Mythra’s fury, acquaints himself with it now that he has a name to call it by. That responding warmth in his core is much more comfortable.

“Love, hmm?” Jade asks, just so they don’t have to suffer the silence any longer.

Mythra blushes, ducks her head down. “Well duh,” she huffs, crossing arms over her chest. “You’re my friend, you know? We’ve been through a lot together, and, and I care about you, and—it’s normal to love your friends, you know??” Her voice is tight, embarrassed. “But also if you make me explain this any more I _will_ die on the spot.”

Jade laughs. “Oh don’t do that, it’d be a mess to clean up,” he tells her. And then, a little gentler, because he can tell she’s worried: “Besides, I think I’ve got the picture.”

“Good.”

Mythra hazards a glance at him, clearly wanting something else. Jade raises his eyebrows at her, silent nudging to get on with it rather than just sit there and stew in indecision. Mythra shoots him a look like she can’t believe he’s making her do this, and then she swallows, sets her jaw.

And then she hugs him.

Well, she moves across the bed until she’s sitting next to him and then flops against his shoulder, first, before she hugs him, but she still hugs him. Jade hums, surprised, puts his papers to the side and then figures out what the hell he’s supposed to do from there. ( _The less said about the amount of hugs he’s received in this lifetime, the better; though even if he were a blade with a different driver, Jade wonders if it might still be a form of affection he’d avoid._ ) He’d tell Mythra to move, but something in _her_ core seems to have settled with the action, so Jade leaves her be.

Well. It takes a bit more shifting than it might have been worth, but Jade wraps an arm around Mythra in return. He’s not a complete asshole. The least he can do is hug his friend back.

“It’s over,” Mythra says, so quiet Jade almost doesn’t hear it. “We’re gonna be okay.”

And Jade believes her.

**Author's Note:**

> oh yeah i drew fanart for this [check it out.](https://twitter.com/rarsneezes/status/1249218851616591873)
> 
> [here's a sketch of how ywkon's plot unfolds after soup](https://rarsneezes.dreamwidth.org/27461.html), which obviously i'm not writing but it's, we plotted it out we might as well share
> 
> [also i made a fanmix for soup!](https://rarsneezes.dreamwidth.org/27766.html)


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